Mirchandani: Oracle Fusion Gets Its Due
I missed this a while back, but Vinnie Mirchandani always has interesting takes. Here’s what he saw when he watched Oracle CEO Larry Ellison give his keynote at this year’s Oracle OpenWorld:
Larry Ellison could have been somber – if he knew of his friend Steve Jobs dying he did not let on. He could have been pissy about the Marc Benioff incident in the morning. He could have been lethargic – the Infosys session that preceded his put the lady sitting next to me to sleep. Instead he was in fine fettle – humorous, sarcastic. Probably the most enjoyable OOW keynote I have seen from him in a few years.
Why?
Oracle arranged for several sessions with its Apps leadership team and several of the Fusion early adopter customers. The range and size of the customers was impressive (I spent time with senior IT and finance execs from large aerospace, mortgage, restaurant chain, federal agency, insurance, electronics firms) – as was their pragmatism. The majority were happy to be on-premise liking future flexibility to move to a SaaS or on-demand mode. Their major drivers – instead of doing a major upgrade on an existing Oracle apps platform (JDE, PeopleSoft etc) why not go with a more modern Fusion architecture?
Interesting to note that the standard upgrade junction/opportunity is making organizations consider Fusion. Some six months ago, the idea of Fusion being looked at for the next upgrade cycle was a fantasy. Now, it’s happening — for real. But is it perfect for all organizations? No –it’s still a fledgling rollout, no matter how you cut it.
Fusion is also inconsistent in its depth – richer in core financials, HRM and CRM functionality than other parts of the enterprise, and the vertical journey to migrate Retek, i-Flex etc has just begun, though Thomas Kurian , EVP Product Development gave me a confident response on the speed at which that verticalization will proceed.
Consider Fusion, but do so realistically is the takeaway here. In many of our client conversations, there’s a lot of interest in Fusion, but once the surface is scratched and pragmatism seeps into the discussion, few are ready to move away from a mature PeopleSoft system just yet.
If you have questions or comments about Fusion, its adoption and what it means for PeopleSoft, please let us know. We’ll be happy to talk. No pressure, no pitch. We enjoy talking Oracle to anyone.
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