Oracle's 'Project Fusion' on collision course with NetWeaver

While the news this week from Redwood City is, for the most part, good for PeopleSoft/J.D. Edwards customers, in a couple of years they'll all need to upgrade to Oracle's new family of products, called Project Fusion, if they want to stick with Oracle. In a recent blog post,ZDNet's Dan Farber says, "It has the right model for the next generation of software, applying industry standards such as Java, Web services and the Internet to software platforms." Fusion steps up to compete head to head with SAP's NetWeaver platform, which some analysts tout as pioneering "applistructure," the conceptwhere a single platform merges with applications via built-in business objects, all exposed through interfaces based on Web services standards. But while Ellison disses SAP for even trying to go after Oracle with its database server software, AMR Research points out that the winner of this battle may not be the one which first delivers on SOA, but rather, on applistructure:

While we believe the launch was very positive for customers, we didn't hear any discussions of the role that Project Fusion will play in driving down the costs of managing next generation architectures. The real winner will not be the first to deliver on SOA. Instead, it will be the first to deliver on a new applistructure that makes it easy to install and upgrade enterprise software.

How do you think Project Fusion measures up to SAP's NetWeaver? Make a comment and let us know...