Oracle's Fusion Applications reaches 100 customers

Boeing and Société Générale among the first wave to sign up...

Larry Ellison on stage at this year's Oracle OpenWorldPhoto: Oracle PR

Oracle has hit the 100-customer mark for Fusion Applications suite.

Oracle announced the century at its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, meeting the relatively low target its CEO Larry Ellison set at last year's conference.

Ellison said at the time he expected only 50 to 100 customers to move onto the Fusion apps in the first half of 2011. The customers using Fusion are part of the early adopter programme - general availability of Fusion Applications is expected to be announced shortly.

Fusion Applications are a range of some 100 or so software modules - covering areas including ERP, finance, HR, procurement and sales - built on a common middleware platform. By using a shared platform, the applications should be easier to integrate. The system is intended to make it easier for companies to take up, configure and build out than current Oracle applications.

"We needed to change and modernise the user experience," Steve Miranda, SVP of applications development at Oracle told OpenWorld. "Adoption of applications had to be significantly easier. [Fusion] is much more component-based, so it's easier to start small and grow big."

Among the 100 customers actively using Fusion Applications are Boeing and Société Générale - according to Oracle, a further 100 customers have also licenced the software.

The most popular modules are CRM and HCM (human capital management), Miranda said, with "the vast majority of customers" using multiple Fusion modules such as sales and quota management, or compensation management and HR.

Seventy to 80 per cent of customers are using more than one module, Miranda added. "Customers doing ERP - specifically finance and procurement projects - doing a big bang core, we have fewer on those."

Having met its aim of signing up 100 users within the first few months, Oracle won't be announcing another customer target for Fusion Applications: "We haven't set any targets for where we'll be in a year," Miranda said.