Essbase Strategic to Oracle Fusion

We have been hearing that Essbase is a core technology in the Oracle Fusion strategy, but what is Fusion and how does Essbase fit?

In general, Fusion is the next generation set of applications from Oracle. Oracle has acquired a number of companies over the past several years and each company, like Hyperion, brought compelling functionality to the Oracle family.  Each product they acquired, however, presented significantly different user experiences.  Under the covers, the acquired products were also significantly different as they were built on a variety of technical frameworks.

In Fusion applications, Oracle is bringing together the world class applications they have acquired into a single suite.  Fusion is not simply a marketing slogan nor is it simply a creative packaging of the acquired products.  Instead, Fusion is a completely new product line that takes the best ideas from the acquired products and incorporates them into a single, rationalized product.  These products have been rewritten from scratch using a single UI platform, the Oracle Application Development Framework ("ADF") which is an industry standard Java technology that runs on Oracle Middleware.  Oracle ADF delivers a standard set of components which are available to customers and partners and when customers want, or need, to extend the Fusion applications, the extension will be written in the same ADF Framework that Oracle uses to build the products.

So, how does Essbase fit in?  I had previously heard that Essbase will be incorporated into the Fusion Financials General Ledger as the standard allocation engine.  I was thrilled to hear this week that the Fusion Financials General Ledger will also automatically spin off Essbase analytic cubes.  This is great news for all of us that love Essbase as it places Essbase into *every* Oracle customer.  With all of the love Oracle has given Essbase this year, this has been the best Oracle Open World ever!