Pang notes that the priority right now for Oracle "is to steer the majority of Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise and JD Edwards Enterprise One customers to run on the most current releases," he says. "Once they are on the latest releases, it would be an easy task for them to incorporate the Fusion Applications modules into their current environment either through on-demand or on-premise because of the co-existence principle of Fusion."

Jim Shepherd, senior vice president of research at AMR Research, says Oracle realized that there was no overwhelming demand in the market for a next-generation ERP system, and "most of the acquired PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards customers were much more interested in enhancements for their existing software than they were in migrating to a new product." In turn, Oracle has lowered the priority of delivering Fusion Apps to the market.

"I don't think there has been any downside to the delay of Fusion," Shepherd adds.

Besides, says Ovum's Davis, the enterprise customers aren't ready for it anyway. "Even if Oracle got everything out in 2009, would the market be ready to shift over that quickly to it?" he asks. "I doubt it."

Oracle has enjoyed exceptional financial returns in 2008, especially given the state of the economy. Many of its customers, which have been pouring maintenance dollars into Oracle's coffers, might not be as fiscally sound as Oracle right now—another factor that could have caused Oracle to pull back on the plans.

And lastly, there's also no looming competitive threat forcing Oracle's hand. "If you look at what SAP and Microsoft are doing with their next-generation applications, then you have to say that [Oracle] is not under any incredible pressure from competitive sources to get their Fusion Apps together that much faster," Ovum's Davis points out. "It's not like if they're not out by 2009, SAP and Microsoft are going to leave them in the dust."

Can Oracle Distance Itself from SAP?

Oracle's Fusion Apps delivery approach will be less a big-bang announcement and more a phased, piecemeal unveiling of applications, like those for project management, business intelligence, HR and supply chain management, say Oracle execs.

In the end however, some industry analysts and Oracle watchers believe that when Oracle does deliver on what it has promised with Fusion Apps, that it could change the landscape of enterprise software.

"Should Oracle succeed, they will create a significant gap in the enterprise applications space between Oracle and SAP," says Forrester's Wang. "The analytical dashboards and push-driven screens are quite significant. The thoughtfulness in how information is consumed and delivered is extremely significant."

IDC's Pang thinks Fusion Apps' ability for customers to run applications both on-premise and on-demand and its co-existence capability (to run Fusion applications along with existing E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and JDE) "will be a game changer."

Other analysts, however, disagree. While AMR's Shepherd thinks that Fusion's promised advanced functionalities (such as Web 2.0) and underlying technologies (SOA and business process modeling) will be significant, they will not add up to a game change "because Oracle has a very good product line today, and the ERP market doesn't change that quickly," he says.

Gartner's Genovese also remains unconvinced. "The product, when delivered, will be very generic," she says. "It might cause some technology excitement in the beginning, but it is going to be hard for customers to justify a completely new product that doesn't provide business based ROI over their current solutions."