On 22 May 2011 Oracle Fusion Applications (Beta version) was available for download on eDelivery.

What is Oracle Fusion Applications:

‘Designed from the ground up using the latest technology advances and incorporating the best practices gathered from Oracle’s thousands of customers, Oracle Fusion Applications are 100% open-standards-based business applications that set a new standard for the way we innovate, work, and adopt technology’ (www.oracle.com)

To give you an impression of the end product see this demo.

To give an idea of the infrastructure of Oracle Fusion Applications, see the next picture.

This post and all posting still to come, will describe the installation steps to install Oracle Fusion Applications.

Recently the Oracle Applications team of Logica discussed the near future of Oracle Fusion Applications. In various breakout sessions, the team got a better understanding of Oracle Fusion.

During a joint session we had a discussion on a number of statements. A brief recap: 

• About the question that it still would take did some years there were diverging views. The majority agreed that widespread implementation and upgrades will not be seen in the immediate future. Oracle has a tradition that it will take a while before a full product suite is not only available, but also stable and ease to implement and maintain. 
• There is certainly a market for Fusion Applications. Both in HCM and Financials and accross all Industry Sectors. Keywords are: mobile applications, less need for customization and user friendly.
• Fusion Applications will be a re-implementation of the current applications like PeopleSoft. To our opinion both functionally and technically the difference with the current applications are so major that upgrading is not likely. Change management will be important. Financial Applications seem already familiar with process-oriented approach. HCM is more module / function-oriented. Fusion is certainly process driven and compares better with Oracle eBusiness Suite.
• On the question of what training would be needed, there was a dichotomy between the technical and functional consultants. The latter expected more training on new features such as integrated BI and the process approach. For the technical consultants the focus will be on Java / OAF / JDEV. A shift from customizations to configuration and integration. Impact seems bigger on technical side.

The next steps. Make it available in a sandbox environment.

Shortly after our meeting Fusion Applications became available for partners and one of our consultants is trying to implement Fusion Applications in our sandbox environment. Follow his progress http://twitter.com/#!/Hakanbiroglu

Ingredients:

For this demonstration Oracle Enterprise Linux (a.k.a. “Unbreakable Linux”) was used. Installed in a virtual environment with 1,5GB RAM and a 25GB harddisk.

Oracle’s Fusion Applications v1 is finally announced this year … this could have been my opening sentence for the last 5 years but this time it is real. It is becoming very concrete now. Oracle is working with early adaptor customers to implement Fusion Applications modules next to their current application landscape. This co-existence strategy will be the strategy to convince customers to migrate to Fusion Applications in the next couple of years.

As mentioned earlier in one of my blog posts, Oracle gave us the opportunity to get a presentation about Fusion Applications on our yearly Oracle event. It was a great way to get introduced to Fusion Applications.

Last week, during our practice meeting, Oracle provided us with a presentation about Fusion Applications. Very interesting to see what the scope of V1 is and what the approach to customers will be.

Everybody has heard that Fusion Applications is generally available in the first quarter of 2011. Co-existence is the approach to current and new customers. By implementing Fusion modules within the current application landscape, Oracle will introduce Fusion Applications at customers.

The focus area’s for co-existence are:

• HCM: Talent Management
• HCM: Workforce Lifecycle Management
• FMS: Accounting Hub
• CRM: Sales Territory Management

 I’m trying now to arrange demo’s focussing on Fusion HCM and CRM. That will make our consultants even more enthusiastic !!!