Oracle's Fusion 11g lays groundwork for ERP platform

By David Worthington

July 1, 2009 —

Oracle's Fusion Middleware 11g introduces an integrated, pluggable component architecture that lays the foundation for its next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, but Fusion's full advantages are only realized when every component is Oracle-supplied, analysts say.

The 11g suite, released today, includes new versions of Oracle Coherence, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle JDeveloper, Oracle JRockit, and WebLogic Server, as well as an array of additional middleware to enable an event-driven architecture (EDA) within enterprises.

The company also delivered WebCenter Suite 11g, a new version of its enterprise portal platform that integrates with Enterprise Manager, Oracle's environment for configuring and managing applications. Some of its highlights are a team environment for projects, integration with Microsoft Office, and social computing services to help users collaborate on work.

Ultimately, Oracle's goal with Fusion is to create not only best-of-breed middleware, but also "to build the foundation for the next-generation ERP system," said Stefan Ried, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. Fusion is the keystone of a long-term replacement for Oracle Applications, PeopleSoft and Siebel, and Oracle may disclose its full vision of ERP at its OpenWorld 2009 conference in October, he added.

The broader strategy is evidenced by Fusion's integration of Oracle Identity Management 11g with other Fusion middleware, as well as Oracle’s investment in its JRockit Java Virtual Machine and its Coherence distributed data caching system, he said. "It is for large-scale ERP types of applications built in Java."

In Fusion 11g, Coherence has been tied into Oracle's TopLink Java object-to-relational mapping and persistence tool, providing for large-scale Java object caching.

This "tera-scale" caching, according to Software AG deputy CTO Miko Matsumura, might displace reliance on traditional relational SQL database infrastructure.

And Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director for Burton Group Application Platform Strategies, said, "I tend to agree with Miko's assertion that Java is the new SQL. Oracle's ownership of Java will give them a huge advantage going forward. For example, combine CEP [Complex Events Processing] with the Coherence object data grid, and Oracle has something very interesting and unique. This solution
maintains data from the event stream in the distributed in-memory data grid
rather than a relational database [as most other CEP solutions do].
Developers use Java to interface with the data grid; not SQL. And Java is
much more expressive than SQL."

But Adam Honore, research director at Aite Group, said while Oracle's use of caching is interesting, it would not mean the end of SQL. "Not everyone is a Java shop," he said.

Other core elements of Fusion are JRockit and WebLogic Java application server.

Oracle's WebLogic Java application server has been updated to provide greater automation and overall reliability to reduce administrative costs and increase uptime, according to the company.

Fusion incorporates EDA functionality into WebLogic with an application grid infrastructure that includes Oracle GridLink for Oracle Real Application Clusters and Oracle Fusion Middleware Enterprise Grid Messaging. Oracle Fusion Middleware ActiveCache is another component that is designed to make the grid elastic to changes in application demand and system load.

"Oracle wants to be a one-stop shop. You can buy everything you need: applications, software infrastructure, tools, databases, management and hardware infrastructure from Oracle," Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director for Burton Group Application Platform Strategies, wrote in her blog. Each product is "best of breed" and can stand on its own, she noted.

"This integration was an enormous undertaking. Oracle has proven over the years to be able to rise to occasions like this and deliver relatively high-quality software," said Jason Bloomberg, a managing partner at ZapThink.

Fusion's components are also built using Application Development Framework (ADF), Oracle's implementation of the JavaServer Faces (JSF) Web application framework, and have been carefully made to work together, Manes said.

Components may be replaced with non-Oracle products that are also JSF-based; however, "Oracle has deliberately limited the scope of these products to work only with Oracle-supplied platform components," she added.

Non-Oracle components break the "integrated benefits of the platform, which derive from the common development and management systems [JDeveloper and Enterprise Manager]," Manes explained. "The reality is that no one has an entirely homogeneous environment. Oracle claims that Enterprise Manager supports end-to-end business process monitoring, but the concept breaks down if the process includes a .NET service or a third-party [commercial, off-the-shelf] application. A better solution is a management strategy that embraces diversity."

Further, Java developers must follow the ADF model and use Oracle's JDeveloper IDE and TopLink to build applications for the Fusion platform. The IDE has visual tools that add a layer of abstraction to make the platform "friendlier to more types of users," said Ted Farrell, chief architect and vice president of tools and middleware at Oracle.

Oracle has also consolidated its Collaxa and Fuego runtime engines into a single engine that can run both BPEL scripts and BPMN models, Manes said.

Also, Fusion uses well-formed standards, Farrell said. "The metadata that is used to design the application is what is executed."

"This offering is essentially traditional middleware: Hook everything in the enterprise up to it and it will take care of the rest of the integration story for you," Bloomberg said.

"What's missing is any sort of realization that enterprise customers have already been through the SOA ring of fire and are no longer looking to middleware to drive the business value that IT should provide. Oracle's real challenge is in telling the appropriate virtualization and abstraction story."

Related Search Term(s): ERP, Oracle

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