Oracle could tie its next generation of business applications closer to its own software stack in a move that experts said would lower customers' costs but could also lock customers into Oracle's upgrade cycles.

Speaking at a UK customer event in early May, Charles Phillips, president of Oracle, said that the next wave of PeopleSoft and JD Edwards releases will be certified on both Oracle's Fusion middleware and rival software stacks, including Microsoft SQL and IBM's DB2 database and WebSphere middleware.

But Phillips suggested that in the future Oracle could simplify infrastructure management by optimising applications on its own middleware rather than alternative third-party offerings.

The vendor plans to deliver a "next generation" application product set in 2008 as part of its Project Fusion roadmap to merge functionality from Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications.

"We can do certain things if we optimise [applications] for a certain stack, like improve manageability and upgrades," Phillips said. "We're consulting customers about whether they'd prefer that value to wider platform support," he added.

A final decision will be made around the end of the year, but Phillips hinted that Oracle would prefer to see tighter integration, adding that reducing the number of variables in customers' software stacks would reduce their costs by making it easier to install updates and patches. Phillips added that Oracle wanted to challenge current complexity that typically leads to 80 percent of IT budgets being spent on maintenance.

David Bradshaw of analyst Ovum said it looked as if the decision had already been made. "It is inevitable Oracle is going to want to favour its own middleware options," he added. "The issue is to what extent its customers make it support other third-party platforms as well."

Bradshaw added, "The idea is that customers will be able to modify and realign applications far easier if it is integrated with the same vendor's middleware. But the question is, will the benefits be big enough to make customers actually move from legacy middleware?"