Five Common Questions about Oracle Fusion Applications

Best practices and business processes based on hundreds of years of learning can help Oracle Fusion Applications build the next-generation enterprise.

by Basheer Khan, June 2012

I still remember when I was invited to attend the first Oracle Fusion Inner Circle event at Oracle OpenWorld 2008. Oracle has done an outstanding job of engaging the user community, not just to understand the requirements across various business areas, but also to invite users to validate Oracle Fusion Applications that were developed based on these requirements. This industry’s largest software development effort culminated with the general availability announcement of Oracle Fusion Applications at Oracle OpenWorld 2011.

Incorporating best practice business processes based on hundreds of years of learning, Oracle Fusion Applications hold the potential to transform your business into a next-generation enterprise. As an early adopter, I have experienced this next-generation adaptability, productivity and manageability firsthand. The current v1 release of Oracle Fusion Applications includes Financial Management; Human Capital Management; Customer Relationship Management; Supply Chain Management; Project Portfolio Management; Procurement; and Governance, Risk and Compliance. No matter which application suite you have been using to date, Oracle Fusion Applications are worth exploring and experiencing.

Here are five commonly asked questions about Oracle Fusion Applications.

What is different about Oracle Fusion Applications?

I often get this question. For me, the biggest differentiator is the usability. While most applications are developed to fulfill functionality, Oracle Fusion Applications were developed with a huge emphasis on usability. Kudos to the Oracle Usability team, which invested significant effort in understanding usability needs by conducting multitudes of usability testing sessions. Leveraging this user feedback and best practices from existing applications, the Usability team established guidelines, design patterns and standards that were easily implemented by Oracle Product Development. Oracle Fusion Applications provide a consistent, role-based user interface that is infused with Web 2.0 capabilities and incorporates embedded decision support. As I’ve started to use Oracle Fusion Applications, I now realize how significantly simpler it is to do your work with intuitive and intelligent user experience.

What is the foundation for Fusion Applications?

Oracle Fusion Applications are built on the industry-leading, open-standards Oracle Fusion Middleware platform, which includes some of the most powerful, state-of-the-art technology available. Oracle Fusion Middleware provides support for security, user interface framework, business intelligence, collaboration, search capabilities, business process orchestration and extensibility of Oracle Fusion Applications.

How long does it take to install Fusion Applications?

Installing Oracle Fusion Applications is getting easier with every release. You can choose to install Oracle Fusion Applications on “bare metal,” or leverage Oracle Virtual Machines (OVM) to host all components. The Oracle Provisioning Framework is used to deploy Oracle Fusion Applications on bare metal, while the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder supports OVM-based deployments. A typical OVM installation can be completed within three days, while the bare metal installation takes up to two weeks. At a minimum, bare metal installs require two servers, and I have performed an OVM installation on a single server in two days.

What happens to my existing applications?

One of the best aspects of Oracle Fusion Applications is their ability to co-exist alongside your existing applications footprint. Several organizations have now realized that implementing Fusion Applications is not necessarily a “rip and replace” exercise. One or more pillars of Fusion Applications can be deployed to take advantage of their unique functionality, seamlessly integrating them with your existing applications.

How do I manage Oracle Fusion Applications?

Oracle Fusion Applications can be very efficiently managed with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, a complete cloud management solution. Oracle Enterprise Manager provides a comprehensive application management framework that includes discovering and system monitoring; application performance management; configuration management; and lifecycle management, including backup and recovery. By monitoring what matters and managing by exception, Oracle Enterprise Manager offers a complete framework for providing real-time diagnostics to identify issues impacting the business and resolve them quickly.

It has been an amazing journey to these next-generation applications. They need to be experienced to understand the difference they can make to your organization. We at Innowave have, and I hope you will too. Look for some exciting announcements related to Oracle Fusion Applications in the Cloud at Oracle Open World 2012.

Basheer Khan is the founder and chief executive officer of the award-winning, California-based Innowave Technology. He is an Oracle ACE Director and was selected Oracle Magazine’s Integration Architect of the Year in 2006.