MIDDLEWARE

As part of its commitment to help organizations integrate and manage enterprise complexity, Oracle announced Oracle Fusion Middleware and a roadmap for certifying PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications with this middleware offering. Oracle Fusion Middleware is the newly created brand for Oracle's family of existing, world-class middleware products, which includes all of the products needed to integrate a number of diverse business applications. These products include the family of products in Oracle Application Server 10g -- Application Development Tools and J2EE Application Server; Web Services infrastructure; Enterprise Service Buses and Integration; Business Process Management and Activity Monitoring; Business Intelligence Tools; Security and Identity management; Enterprise Portals and Mobile -- as well as Data Hubs and Oracle Collaboration Suite. The products are available today and are currently being used by thousands of customers and partners throughout the world. As part of the company's initiative to make application integration easier for customers, Oracle Fusion Middleware provides a comprehensive, open, standards-based approach for deploying Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). Using Web Services, an Enterprise Service Bus and Oracle BPEL Process Manager to implement SOAs, customers can easily integrate heterogeneous business applications and automate business processes. Oracle's middleware is used to support the Oracle E-Business Suite, as well as other enterprise applications and thousands of Independent Software Vendors that use it as the basis to build their own custom applications. Marking the next step in Project Fusion, Oracle plans to certify PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications with Oracle Fusion Middleware products in Q2 and Q3 calendar 2005, respectively. The certification of Oracle Fusion Middleware for PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications demonstrates Oracle's commitment to enabling customers to move to Information-Age applications today. Customers can use Oracle Fusion Middleware to support their entire enterprise including Oracle and non-Oracle business applications, custom applications developed by in-house IT staff and consultants and the emerging broad array of standards-compliant enterprise services. As part of Oracle's commitment to PeopleSoft and JD Edwards customers, Oracle is also continuing to support its PeopleSoft Enterprise and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne product lines on platforms from other vendors including IBM and BEA. "The certification of PeopleSoft and JD Edwards expands our ability to simplify the integration of heterogeneous applications and data," said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president, Server Technologies, Oracle. "Instead of locking customers into proprietary systems, Oracle Fusion Middleware provides customers with a flexible and cost effective platform to fuse applications together." Oracle Fusion Middleware Delivers Project Fusion Benefits to Customers In addition to being certified for use with Oracle's Java Application Server, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications will also be integrated with Oracle Portal enabling customers to access Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards applications from a single Enterprise Portal. PeopleSoft and JD Edwards Applications will also be integrated with Oracle Identity Management lowering the cost of managing security for customers. Using Oracle BPEL Process Manager, a part of Oracle Fusion Middleware, customers will also be able to build and deploy business processes across heterogeneous applications, using APIs (application program interfaces) and Web service-enabled integration points from PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and the Oracle E-Business Suite. To facilitate the highest degree of interoperability, Oracle provides libraries of integration points for each product line and exposes these integration points in integration repositories. Both Oracle and PeopleSoft launched hosted services repositories in 2004. These repositories provide customers with a single source of documentation for all Web service-enabled integration points. In 2005, local repositories will allow customers to connect application services with Oracle BPEL Process Manager for business process orchestration across multiple product lines. For more information visit: www.oracle.com/middleware.com. Industry Analysts Recognize Oracle Fusion Middleware as Leader The Oracle Fusion Middleware family of products has received numerous accolades from leading industry analyst firms and won a number of awards from independent product reviews and developer publications. Oracle Fusion Middleware products have been cited by Forrester Research as a leading product in their industry reports. Oracle was recognized as a leader among the select companies that Forrester invited to participate in its March 30, 2005, Forrester Wave: Application Server Platforms, Q1 2005. The Oracle Application Platform suite has been positioned in the leaders quadrant in the 2Q05 Gartner Enterprise Application Servers Magic Quadrant and in the 1H05 Gartner Integration Backbone Software Suppliers Magic Quadrant.