OpenWorld: Oracle pushes iPad support as Fusion Apps is finally released

SAN FRANCISCO: Oracle has finally launched its Fusion Applications best-of-breed enterprise apps suite, six years after development started.

Fusion Applications consist of apps from across the Oracle stable, combining the best elements from its own and acquired products including customer relationship management (CRM), financials and human capital management.

At this year's OpenWorld show in San Francisco, Oracle announced that 100 customers are already using Fusion apps, and reiterated that the apps are available as on-premise, software-as-a-service (SaaS) or a hybrid of these.

Oracle also launched a series of 'coexistence' processes that match apps such as E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and Siebel with similar Fusion modules.

At the show, Oracle demonstrated the Fusion CRM app, which lets customers build and personalise a report in a similar way to using Excel, and then drop it directly into the app. This could cut down on development resources and reduce the time needed for workers to get the tools they need, according to the firm.

"End users can do in Fusion Applications what they can do in Yahoo and iGoogle," Anthony Lye, senior vice president for Oracle CRM, told the keynote audience.

Lye added that Fusion apps users get full access to the Groovy Java programming language, letting them take any Java code and run it alongside the apps, for example to paste in script to create business logic.

Chris Leone, group vice president for Oracle Fusion and GRC Applications Development, also shed some light on how the integration between SaaS and on-premise will work.

He gave the example of a firm taking data from an on-premise HR app about an employee's benefits and pay, using a SaaS-based compensation manager tool to change their job code and salary, and then pushing that information back to the on-premise system.