Oracle airs PeopleSoft integration game plan

Analysts and customers last week welcomed Oracle's announcement of aplan to integrate PeopleSoft applications with its own, but said they now want to see the company deliver results based on these promises.

Project Fusion is the company's effort to combine the Oracle, PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards enterprise applications into one suite. Fusion isn't completely due until 2008, although the first deliverables are set to appear next year, company executives say.

"We still have a lot more questions than answers," says Andreas Bitterer, vice president of technology research services at Meta Group. "They have told us what they want to do, not how they are going to do it."

What Oracle did say is that Fusion will be Java-based and use standard technology for easy integration with other applications. It will provide a simple upgrade from PeopleSoft, Oracle and J.D. Edwards applications, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison says.

"I expect the majority of customers will do the upgrade," Ellison says.

Dan Shannon, a senior Oracle consultant at FMT Systems, says Oracle put "a good spin" on the integration challenge. Although integrating PeopleSoft and Oracle software will be tough, Shannon says he believes that Oracle can build a very good unified applications suite. "If they don't deliver, they're done," he says.

The 2008 due date for Fusion and the announced end of support date for PeopleSoft products in 2013 give PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards users time to weigh their options, Bitterer says. "It is a comforting story," he says.

Evers is a correspondent with the IDG News Service.