Can Oracle take one bite of the "application elephant" at at time?

Implications: 1. Oracle has bought a lot of companies recently which has raised integration concerns. 2. Will Oracle be able to integrate all of the applications to sustain a competitve edge?

Analysis: Oracle has been busy buying companies over the last several years, but as the article points out, many CIO's do not yet know what Oracle will be giving them for Christmas.  The Oracle "elves" have plenty of components to build toys with, but are there any drawings so the "elves" can know what they are building?

I will stop with the joking and raise a few serious questions.  Is there a blueprint for how this will all fit together?  And if so, can anyone execute such a complex plan?  Is the fact of John Wookey's replacement a statement of overly complex the task has become?

I do think Oracle is making progress in putting together a plan for a release of Fusion.  The new middleware that allows the workflow and data to be moved between some of the products is a step towards migration.  We are also hearing stories of Siebel analytics being selected as a reporting tool and Oracle Discover being put into maintenance only mode.  These are valid attempts to select the building blocks of a future integrated product.  Oracle certainly has a good set of tools to select from, so in that sense it could be argued Oracle has "a good problem to have".

And I also find that the recent purchase of Agile making sense in that you would want a solid product feature set in the product lifecycle management area.  The recent announcement of a tender offer for BEA also makes sense from the standpoint of having a leading middleware solution as the web 2.0 and service oriented architecture turns mainstream.

But at some point, do we have too many good ideas.  Is building FUSION going to become similar to turning the Queen Mary II around in the Panama canal?  Something that would only be possible if you rebuilt the architecture of the foundation (or the Panama canal in my analogy).  This is the question that CIO's are beginning to answer.

Another way to look at this problem is the make vs. buy.  In the case of Oracle, they have clearly chosen the buy approach while SAP looks to be choosing the make (relatively speaking) approach.  In the enterprize IT space, it has become clear that the buy solution is the best approach in almost all cases (let's not forget the late 90's frenzy to build everything).  So is this case, Oracle looks to be choosing the strategically correct choice.

But then a good choice only works if you can execute on the strategy and this is where the industry has become murky.  And as much as I would like to state an opinion about a final answer, I think the prudent answer is to wait until next Christmas before opening the present.