Oracle Supports Fusion Components with J.D. Edwards, iSeries

New identity management and financial applications unveiled recently by Oracle will work with the iSeries, DB2/400, and J.D. Edwards software, the software giant confirmed last week. World and EnterpriseOne shops will be able to utilize Oracle’s Identity Management and Financial Consolidation Hub applications, which are two pieces of the company’s Fusion project to provide a common middleware layer for the various ERP applications the company has acquired.

While Oracle has been less than crystal clear about its long-term plans to support the iSeries and DB2/400 since it obtained the J.D. Edwards assets with its January acquisition of PeopleSoft, the software giant apparently is not loathe to sell J.D. Edwards shops new applications they can bolt onto their systems in the meantime.

Last week the company announced a new release of Oracle Identity Management, an application that provides a common LDAP-based platform. Organizations can use it to control individual and group access to applications running on different systems. In addition to provisioning, managing, and monitoring digital identities and enforcing business rules, it provides single sign-on (SSO) capabilities, supports strong biometric authentication, and supports interoperability with outside applications via APIs and Web services.

An Oracle spokeswoman confirmed the new release of Oracle Identity Management will support DB2/400 and the EnterpriseOne ERP product line, with product certification due in the first quarter of 2006. In addition to working with PeopleSoft Enterprise and EnterpriseOne products, the product works with other non-Oracle infrastructure, including DB2, DB2/400, and SQL Server databases and IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic.

On June 1, Oracle unveiled a new business intelligence application called the Financial Consolidation Hub. This new product, which is also part of the Fusion Middleware strategy, is designed to help organizations that use disparate financial systems to consolidate their financial data. Once data from Oracle’s general ledger and other systems has been centralized, reports can be generated that show the organization is complying with whatever accounting rules it must follow, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, the United States’ Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the UK’s Combined Code, or other global mandates.

Because the goal of the Financial Consolidation Hub is to help organizations deal with disparate accounting systems, it’s no wonder that Oracle is supporting the J.D. Edwards products with the new software. In addition to the J.D. Edwards products, the Financial Consolidation Hub will support PeopleSoft Enterprise and SAP‘s ERP software, an Oracle spokeswoman says.

Oracle has several other hub products, including the Customer Data Hub, which is used to centralize and cleanse customer data, and to keep it synchronized with other Oracle applications (and non-Oracle apps as well). There is also the Product Information Management Data Hub, which keeps product information synchronized with third-party providers, such as UCCnet. These, too, are Fusion products.

Oracle plans to launch two more hub products in 2005, including the Citizen Data Hub, which helps government agencies create and manage a repository of data about citizens, ostensibly for “better decision making, faster response times, and improved citizen service.” There will also be the Financial Services Accounting Data Hub, which is aimed at helping financial institutions centralize financial operation data, standardize accounting and reporting, and accelerate regulatory disclosure and management reporting.