One of the more remarkable developments at this year’s OpenWorld is the new Oracle WebCenter Suite, positioned as a component of Fusion Middleware that seeks to unify the user experience, offer role- and task-based support for business processes, and deliver enterprise services to the desktop. 

The details

WebCenter Suite will serve several purposes:

• Oracle WebCenter Framework—A standards-based user interface technology that allows developers to embed AJAX-based components, portlets, and content into a more manageable, unified environment
• Oracle WebCenter Studio and Oracle WebCenter Composer—A set of tools to build and deploy the user interfaces and workflows
• Oracle WebCenter Anywhere—A means of deploying personalized interfaces across devices and delivery mechanisms, including mobile devices and integration with incumbent desktop applications (such as Microsoft Office)  
• Oracle WebCenter Services—Allowing companies to embed services like Oracle Secure Enterprise Search, Oracle Content Database, and Oracle Records Database, as well as other emerging Web 2.0-like collaboration and communication capabilities. 
• Oracle WebCenter Spaces—A work environment for group collaboration and communications

Perhaps most importantly for Oracle applications users (whether derived from Oracle, Siebel, JD Edwards, or whatever comes next), WebCenter Framework will act as the eventual, default user interface for Oracle Fusion Applications.

The products first release, Oracle WebCenter Suite 10g R3 is scheduled aggressively, for sometime before the end of this year. It will be licensed as an option atop Oracle Application Server at $50K per CPU.

A glimpse into fusion

WebCenter is the first peep into how Oracle Fusion Applications will look and behave. Details on the functionality planned for the initial Fusion Application releases are nonexistent to date, but now we can at least see how Oracle thinks users will interact with the future suite.

The vision is compelling, combining transactional, collaborative, and analytical modes of working into a single interface; rather than requiring users to jump back and forth between unintegrated enterprise, desktop, and web applications, each with its own look and behavior. Further, WebCenter gives developers complete control on how different elements are combined regardless of source, and allows interfaces to be personalized by business users at the individual, group, and organizational levels.

WebCenter and its role in Fusion Application development answers questions about which user interface technologies are strategic to Oracle, and the answer is none of them; only WebCenter matters, long term. Customers can now develop extensions to their existing applications, or develop free-standing new applications using the same toolkit they will need to extend Fusion Applications. 

Now the important question is: How suitable will the initial releases of WebCenter be for these types of tasks? Only early adopters will be able to answer that.

“Muse”-ing on the competition and other motivations

Oracle isn’t the first to think about this idea, but it just might be in a good position to make it work. Over two and a half years ago, IBM introduced its Workplace Client technology, a similarly standards-based effort to provide a rich, unified experience over the web. SAP’s “Project Muse,” relying in large part on Adobe’s Flex technology, has a remarkably similar purpose and appeal.

Oracle’s advantage may be that it can benefit from both sides—that is, in its need to know and build repeatable packaged ways of handling enterprise application interfaces for Fusion, with leverage and credibility among web and information management developers.

There’s also a pretty simple motivation for providing usability and accessibility like this, trying to take advantage of the viral effect of emerging Web 2.0 technologies and approaches. SAP and Oracle, especially, are trying to sell more seats in their installed bases and be relevant beyond core ERP or other enterprise apps that many users never touch.

There’s a data management motivation (especially for Oracle and IBM) here, too. They offer the interaction layer along with content management and search. They are also in a better position to simply capture and manage more of the data, including the stuff that’s so far been unmanaged (like e-mail), but that needs to be in light of compliance mandates and issues around records retention and litigation support.

Collaboration and the Microsoft question

In an effort to tie together user interaction areas like content management, search, and collaboration, Oracle’s WebCenter is also intended to offer a web-based competition for Microsoft Office for the eyeballs of business users. That is, if the market begins to accept the idea of web-based (or even Software as a service [SaaS}-based) collaboration and knowledge management—possibly as they face the hump of daunting Office and Vista upgrades—IBM, SAP, Oracle, and even Google want to be in position to take some share away from Microsoft. 

Realistically, though, few of the vendors seem willing to bet completely against Microsoft in this market, with so much effort devoted to the “people ready business” and such a strong position with current products.

In any case, we have no doubt about the value of this effort. Companies are rightly tired of juggling numerous complex tools and user interface tools to create them, especially in trying to get to a more scalable, greater common denominator way to deliver personalized interfaces to users using various devices. Ultimately, companies need them to be somehow standards based.

That WebCenter may ultimately provide the user interface and tools for Fusion may have the biggest impact. If Oracle can execute on the plans, and truly bring together the expertise derived from PeopleSoft, which was known for usability, then WebCenter could drive adoption and create a problem for SAP and Microsoft applications.