Friday, March 18, 2005

Project Fusion - merging the Oracle, J.D. Edwards and Peoplesoft Software

In a press release in January 2005, John Wookey unveiled the combined Oracle and PeopleSoft product roadmap and support plans. This post contains the details of Project Fusion, the new effort to merge the JDE, Peoplesoft and Oracle Software.

According to the press release, Project Fusion is "revolutionary technology that will follow an evolutionary path."

Wookey stated: -

The new “Project Fusion” is a new information age architecture based on industry standards that will be modularized for flexible deployment, optimal performance and easy maintenance. New information-driven applications will incorporate key strengths of all product lines and focus on business process automation, industry-specific capabilities, superior usability, real-time information access and reporting, and a shared data model to provide customers with a single source of truth. The “Project Fusion” architecture will leverage the latest Oracle technology for scalability, availability, security and performance. The new architecture and the results companies will achieve will be truly revolutionary, but the path to the new successor product line will be evolutionary.

What was most interesting to see that there is already a timeline for the rollout of the upcoming releases of the software under discussion as well as an estimated release date for Project Fusion which is as follows: -

• PeopleSoft Enterprise 8.9 (2005)
• Oracle E-Business Suite 12 (2006)
• PeopleSoft Enterprise 9 (2006)
• JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12 (2006)
• Ongoing JD Edwards World enhancements planned to be delivered continuously
• First Project Fusion components, specifically data hubs and transaction bases, (beginning in 2006)
• Initial "Project Fusion" applications (2007)
• "Project Fusion" applications (2008)

The press release also contains support milestones and other useful links. There’s also an interesting page on the Oracle site entitled Strategic Direction and Vision that has more information on Project Fusion. It states that Oracle will continue to support Peoplesoft until 2013 and has the following to say about Project Fusion:

Project Fusion: The Successor Product
In addition to continuing development of the three existing lines, we plan to develop a successor suite of products—which is called ‘Project Fusion’—where we hope to merge the features and functions of the J.D. Edwards products and the PeopleSoft products and the Oracle products together. We’ll build, if you will, a super-set application suite using modern technology.