Observers say Oracle has finally made substantial progress on its next-generation Fusion Applications suite, more than three-and-a-half years after the project was first announced.

Oracle has said Fusion Applications will blend together the best features from its various product lines, which include PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, Siebel and E-Business Suite.

But to date, Oracle has only unveiled a handful of CRM (customer relationship management)-centric applications based on Fusion technology. And the departure in October 2007 of John Wookey, a key executive on the project, prompted some observers to raise questions about whether it was severely off course.

However, a more significant release could be imminent.

Floyd Teter of the Oracle Applications Users Group's Fusion Council recently got a preview of "what will eventually evolve into Fusion Applications Version 1.0," he wrote in a recent blog post.

The software Teter viewed during a visit to Oracle's headquarters on Aug. 29 was "not a PowerPoint deck of slides, not non-functional or semi-functional prototypes, but the real honest-to-goodness applications. I witnessed execution of transactions, data input, and drill-downs from analytics into transactional detail," he wrote. "Fusion Applications are real ... period. If you read anything about 'vaporware' or 'not real' or 'far from completion,' recognize it for what it is ... baloney."

"If I were numbering my iterations or versions prior to a 1.0 release, I'd put what I saw today at roughly about version 0.7 or 0.8," Teter added. "But that's strictly a rough, speculative guess on my part, and is definitely not the means by which the Fusion development team is tracking their progress."

Teter's post said the software had a decidedly Web 2.0 feel, emphasizing collaboration among workers and embedded analytics.

"It's obvious that the development team took the time to bring together the best features, processes, and lessons learned from the existing application product lines," he added.

Teter stressed that he was not privy to any release dates for the software he viewed.

Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang said in an e-mail message that he expects Oracle to deliver some more Fusion applications in the near term, but then spread out the release of core finance, HR, supply chain management and other modules over the next three to five years.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.