Oracle OpenWorld's burning questions

Oracle's OpenWorld conference, which kicks off Sunday in San Francisco, could be the biggest one but for the company, which entered the hardware game last year through the purchase of Sun Microsystems and is closing in on $40 billion in revenue.

The past couple of years

For the past couple of years, Oracle has pulled back dramatically on the Fusion Applications hype as development on the then and there-generation suite chugged to a conclusion. Fusion is supposed to combine the best attributes of Oracle's other ERP lines, just as E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft, along with pervasive BI functionality.

"It's important for them to say 'we're open for business with Fusion' and show some customer adoption" at OpenWorld this year, said Forrester Innovation analyst Paul Hamerman.

What current E-Business Suite

Oracle as well could make clearer what current E-Business Suite, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft clients are entitled to in accordance with their maintenance payments in terms of an upgrade to similar Fusion modules.

But Oracle should as well give existing clients a sense of what's in store if they don't on the spur of the moment upgrade to Fusion, Scavo added. "Evidently, Fusion is the future. What kind of investment can [the installed base] expect for their maintenance dollars going forward? Are they going to see the best features of cloud computing, mobile research, and social [software]?"

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