At an event that was supposed to be hosted by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison in San Francisco, Oracle detailed progress on its strategy to integrate its bulging kit bag of acquisitions, which includes PeopleSoft and Siebel, into a fused architecture the company has dubbed Oracle Fusion.

However, Ellison never made it to the party, pulling out at the last minute because of a reported bout of the flu. Meanwhile Oracle executives claimed that the Oracle Fusion project is half-way to its completion and is in fact no longer a project. According to the executives the first Oracle Fusion products will make it to the market in 2008.

“We are already halfway through the development process of Oracle Fusion Applications, and we remain on track for the 2008 target delivery of the Oracle Fusion Applications,” said Oracle president Charles Phillips. “Our customers and partners participating on the Fusion Customer Council have been enthusiastic about the significant progress we’ve made in such a short period of time.  We have defined Oracle Fusion Architecture, certified all Oracle applications on our world-class Oracle Fusion Middleware, which includes a set of mature tools that are being used to develop the Oracle Fusion applications.  Additionally, we have defined the data model and mapped the functionality that is planned for future releases of Oracle Fusion Applications.”

“We have engaged our customer base in the Fusion development process, and feel confident that 80% of our customers will be able to upgrade to Oracle Fusion Applications and can plan to find functionality they had in earlier application versions, as well as new features coming from other applications,” Phillips added.

Oracle Senior Vice President of Applications Development John Wookey detailed new functionality Oracle plans for release in 2006 that will lay the groundwork for customers who choose to upgrade to Oracle Fusion Applications.  Wookey discussed new reporting capabilities that utilise Oracle XML Publisher and can be used with the existing Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise or JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications. The new library of reports, which are the same as those that will be used with the Fusion products, is scheduled to be available for download in 2006.