Too Big to Explain
02 May 2008I spent the morning yesterday at an Oracle Technical Session, lots of government employees and contractors crammed into a ballroom listening to Oracle reps talk about the latest-and-greatest offerings from the beast.
The best part was, after a one hour presentation on “Oracle Fusion Middleware”, by quite a polished speaker, he asks for questions, and someone says:
“Thanks for your presentation, but, I still have no idea what Fusion Middleware does.”
Ouch.
Fair comment, too, the presentation was all market-speak, how data was “integrated”, decisions “made more quickly”, and so on. Clarity is not aided by the fact that “Oracle Fusion Middleware” is itself a suite of a dozen different bits.
To quote Oracle’s web site, a “portfolio of customer-proven software that spans from portals and process managers to application infrastructure, developer tools, and business intelligence”.
Some 
cone-head in the Oracle marketing department has decided that all these bits and pieces will be easier to sell if they are all wrapped under one product brand, “Fusion Middleware”. But really, pretending it is all one thing has made the product too big to explain.
What does it do? Everything. Nothing. It depends.
It brings to mind The Elephant and the Blind Men.