The Fabric of Technology

All major vendors are after it, the middleware battleground lines are drawn and the technology fabric layers are evolving - Integration is BIG again with the open standards available through SOA (I won't mention SOA 2.0!).

Oracle's SOA suite along with new product offerings such as Web Centre and Secure Enterprise Search are the latest weapons Oracle is deploying in the war against Microsoft, BEA and IBM. Oracle also now preaches the gospel according to "Hot Pluggable", but obviously wants its customers to buy wall to wall Oracle. Are Oracle's products any good? Is this new approach sensible?

Oracle is desperately trying to move away from being seen as a proprietary technology company - Oracle Forms, Reports, Applications Interconnect, and towards an organsation which drives innovation through Service Oriented Architecture and web services. By doing so it is changing how it interacts and sells its products to its customers.

Let's all be perfectly honest - which of us live in a world that is 100% dominated by one vendor, we all have real reasons for using multiple technologies and vendor solutions within our organisations. Why? Simply because no vendor has a complete answer - nor should they ever be allowed to, it would stifle competition and innovation.

Oracle's approach to open up its middleware platform and more importantly the next release of their applications suite - Oracle Fusion Applications due in 2008/09 is a critical and smart move. It keeps its existing customers loyal by giving them increased flexibility to integrate and grow and allows organisations to buy best of breed solutions that meet their BUSINESS need. The dog is back wagging its tail!

Oracle's acquisition strategy over the past few years has been (generally!) very well thought through. They have bought many of the best of breed vendors: Seibel for CRM, Peoplesoft for HR, Oblix and Thor for Identity management etc. All of this is key for them moving forward into a heterogeneous world where organisations use multiple technologies and platforms.

What is Oracle's vision? Well Larry Ellison once had an internal broadcast in which he stated that in a few years there would be only 3 main technology vendors: Oracle, Microsoft and IBM, and there would be only 2 main Application Suite vendors: Oracle and SAP. Guess what - his vision is almost here.

What do you think? Do you think Oracle's product strategy is sound? Is it good for customers? What about their pricing models - always a bone of contention?