Recent History

10 Years on from Oracles initial muttering of Fusion application following the takeover of Peoplesoft it now feels as if Oracles Fusion/Cloud based ERP offering has started to make waves. In fact Larry Elision was pushing the “Network Computing” model back in 1995, 20 years ago which is now with slight changes to the model being realised in the guise of Cloud Computing. Oracle Fusion ERP offering has been taken up by some US companies moving onto ERP systems and consulting firms as part of their marketing. I’m sure a number of us have been to presentations where the Fusion Expenses/Procurement/Recruitment has been demonstrated but there was never really a concrete argument to move to Fusion. So it was therefore refreshing at the OUG (Oracle User Group) event in Liverpool December 2014 to her a UK based success story. Reading Borough Council have moved from Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) R11 to Oracle cloud based Fusion applications.

For them the cost of running and rapid implementation of the cloud based solution outweighed the cost of running an in house solution, and even though the Fusion Applications is not a “Functional Rich” as EBS it had enough functionality for them to run their business. They also considered Oracle R12 and faced the same stumbling block as many organisations, unless you are a large global organisation with Shared Service Centres the justification for moved to R12 didn’t really exist. There are still a large number of customer still using Oracle R11 (some I hear are still on 10.7) for whom Oracle are been extending the support for R11. The them I would suggest that Fusion is worth investigating if only using Financials/HR and not using some of the more specialist applications/functionality e.g. Projects/Encumbrance Accounting/Leasing.

Sensible Marketing

It’s taken a long time for Oracle to get there marketing right, at the start the view was a “Best of Breed” applications using Fusion Middleware. So you could use SAP for Manufacturing, Oracle for Financials and Fusion for Consolidation for want of a better example, and all this would integrate seamlessly!!! To their current positon which is the Co-Existence model for Oracle EBS, Siebel, Peoplesoft, JDEdward and Fusion which do integrate. This allows you to take oracles Cloud/Fusion solutions as a piecemeal basis. So if you want to use Fusion GL and Consolidation Hub but still Payables and Receivables on your current E-Business solution you can. To me this is a sensible step, and lets business build up confidence in the solutions rather than making a giant leap in moving wholeheartedly to Fusion.

I for one am breathing a huge sigh of relief, to me Fusion has always been the “Monkey on the Back” for Oracle. After what must have been a huge investment to see the application starting to come of age is great and provides exciting times for all of us who have an interest in Oracles ERP solutions.