Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFM, also known as Fusion Middleware) consists of several software products from Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...

. OFM spans multiple services, including Java EE and developer

Software development

Software development is the development of a software product...

 tools, integration services, business intelligence

Business intelligence

Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....

, collaboration

Collaborative software

Collaborative software is computer software designed to help people involved in a common task achieve goals...

, and content management

Content management

Content management, or CM, is the set of processes and technologies that support the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. In recent times this information is typically referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content...

. OFM depends on open standard

Open standard

An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed . There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage....

s such as BPEL, SOAP

SOAP

SOAP, originally defined as Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of Web Services in computer networks...

, XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 and JMS

Java Message Service

The Java Message Service API is a Java Message Oriented Middleware API for sending messages between two or more clients. JMS is a part of the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition, and is defined by a specification developed under the Java Community Process as JSR 914...

.

Oracle Fusion Middleware provides software for the development, deployment, and management of service-oriented architecture

Service-oriented architecture

In software engineering, a Service-Oriented Architecture is a set of principles and methodologies for designing and developing software in the form of interoperable services. These services are well-defined business functionalities that are built as software components that can be reused for...

 (SOA). It includes what Oracle calls "hot-pluggable" architecture,
designed to facilitate integration with existing applications and systems from other software vendors such as IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

, Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

, and SAP AG

SAP AG

SAP AG is a German software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. Headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, with regional offices around the world, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software...

.

Evolution

Many of the products included under the OFM banner do not themselves qualify as middleware

Middleware

Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...

 products: "Fusion Middleware" essentially represents a re-branding of many of Oracle products outside of Oracle's core database

Database

A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...

 and applications-software offerings—compare Oracle Fusion.

According to Oracle, by 2006 over 30,000 organizations had become Fusion Middleware customers, including over 35 of the world's 50 largest companies and more than 750 of the BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek

Bloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...

 Global 1000, with OFM also supported by 7,500 partner

Business partner

Business partner is a term used to denote a commercial entity with which another commercial entity has some form of alliance. This relationship may be a highly contractual, exclusive bond in which both entities commit not to ally with third parties...

s.

In order to provide standards-based software to assist with business process automation

Business process automation

Business process automation, or BPA, is the strategy a business uses to automate processes in order to contain costs. It consists of integrating applications, restructuring labor resources and using software applications throughout the organization....

, HP has incorporated OFM into its "service-oriented architecture

Service-oriented architecture

In software engineering, a Service-Oriented Architecture is a set of principles and methodologies for designing and developing software in the form of interoperable services. These services are well-defined business functionalities that are built as software components that can be reused for...

 (SOA) portfolio".

Oracle leveraged its Configurable Network Computing

Configurable Network Computing

Configurable Network Computing or CNC is JD Edwards's client–server proprietary architecture and methodology that implements its highly-scalable enterprise-wide business solutions software that can run on a wide variety of hardware, operating systems and hardware platforms...

 (CNC) technology acquired from its PeopleSoft

PeopleSoft

PeopleSoft, Inc. was a company that provided Human Resource Management Systems , Financial Management Solutions , Supply Chain and customer relationship management software, as well as software solutions for manufacturing, enterprise performance management, and student administration to large...

/JD Edwards 2005 purchase.

Oracle Fusion Applications

Oracle Fusion Applications

Oracle Fusion Applications are a portfolio of software products including Financials, Human capital management, Customer relationship management, Supply chain management, Procurement, Governance, and Project portfolio management. The software suite was developed by Oracle Corporation...

, based on Oracle Fusion Middleware, were finally released in September, 2010.

Assessments

In January 2008 Oracle Universal Content Management won InfoWorld

InfoWorld

InfoWorld is an information technology online media and events business operating under the umbrella of InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG...

s "Technology of the Year" award for "Best Enterprise Content Manager", with Oracle SOA Suite

Oracle SOA Suite

In computing, Oracle SOA Suite is a part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware family of software products.-Features:Oracle SOA Suite is a set of service infrastructure components for building, deploying, and managing SOAs. Oracle SOA Suite enables system developers to set up and manage services and to...

 winning the award for "Best Enterprise Service Bus".

In 2007 Gartner, Inc.

Gartner

Gartner, Inc. is an information technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, United States. It was known as GartnerGroup until 2001....

 wrote that "OFM has reached a degree of completeness that puts it on par with, and in some cases ahead of, competing software stacks", and reported revenue from the suite of over US$1 billion during FY06, estimating the revenue from the genuinely middleware aspects at US$740 million.

Oracle Fusion Middleware components

• Enterprise application server
  Application server
  An application server is a software framework that provides an environment in which applications can run, no matter what the applications are or what they do...
  
  
  • Oracle Weblogic Server
    Oracle Weblogic Server
    Owned by Oracle Corporation, Oracle WebLogic consists of a Java EE platform product-family that includes:* a Java EE application server, WebLogic Application Server* an enterprise portal, WebLogic Portal* an Enterprise Application Integration platform...
    
    
  • Oracle Application Server
    Oracle Application Server
    In computing, the Oracle Application Server 10g , consists of an integrated, standards-based software platform. It forms part of Oracle Corporation's Fusion Middleware technology stack...
    
    
  • JRockit
    JRockit
    JRockit, a proprietary Java Virtual Machine originally developed by Appeal Virtual Machines and acquired by BEA Systems in 2002, became part of Oracle Fusion Middleware in 2008....
    
     (a JVM
    Java Virtual Machine
    A Java virtual machine is a virtual machine capable of executing Java bytecode. It is the code execution component of the Java software platform. Sun Microsystems stated that there are over 4.5 billion JVM-enabled devices.-Overview:...
    
    )
  • Tuxedo (software)
    Tuxedo (software)
    Tuxedo is a middleware platform used to manage distributed transaction processing in distributed computing environments...
    
    
• Integration- and process-management
  • BPEL Process Manager
  • Business activity monitoring
    Business activity monitoring
    Business activity monitoring is software that aids in monitoring of business activities, as those activities are implemented in computer systems....
    
    
  • business rule
    Business rule
    A Business rule is a statement that defines or constrains some aspect of the business and always resolves to either true or false. Business rules are intended to assert business structure or to control or influence the behavior of the business. Business rules describe the operations, definitions...
    
    s
  • Business Process Analysis Suite
  • Business process management
    Business process management
    Business process management is a holistic management approach focused on aligning all aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. BPM attempts to...
    
    
  • Oracle Data Integrator (ODI): an application using the database for set-based data integration
  • Enterprise connectivity (adapters)
  • Oracle Enterprise Messaging Service
  • Oracle Enterprise Service Bus
    Oracle Enterprise Service Bus
    Oracle Enterprise Service Bus is a fundamental component of Oracle's Services-Oriented Architecture that provides a loosely-coupled framework for inter-application messaging....
    
    
  • Oracle Application server B2B
  • Oracle Service Registry
  • Oracle Web Services Manager (OWSM), a security and monitoring product for web services
• Application development tools
  • Oracle Application Development Framework
    Oracle Application Development Framework
    In computing, Oracle Application Development Framework, usually called Oracle ADF, provides a commercial Java framework for building enterprise applications. It provides visual and declarative approaches to Java EE development...
    
    
  • JDeveloper
    JDeveloper
    JDeveloper is a freeware IDE supplied by Oracle Corporation. It offers features for development in Java, XML, SQL and PL/SQL, HTML, JavaScript, BPEL and PHP...
    
    
  • Oracle SOA Suite
    Oracle SOA Suite
    In computing, Oracle SOA Suite is a part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware family of software products.-Features:Oracle SOA Suite is a set of service infrastructure components for building, deploying, and managing SOAs. Oracle SOA Suite enables system developers to set up and manage services and to...
    
    
  • TopLink
    TopLink
    In computing, TopLink is an object-relational mapping package for Java developers. It provides a framework for storing Java objects in a relational database or for converting Java objects to XML documents....
    
    , a Java object-relational mapping
    Object-relational mapping
    Object-relational mapping in computer software is a programming technique for converting data between incompatible type systems in object-oriented programming languages. This creates, in effect, a "virtual object database" that can be used from within the programming language...
    
     package
  • Oracle Forms
    Oracle Forms
    Oracle Forms is a software product for creating screens that interact with an Oracle database. It has an IDE including an object navigator, property sheet and code editor that uses PL/SQL. It was originally developed to run server-side in character mode terminal sessions. It was ported to other...
    
     services
  • Oracle Developer Suite
    Oracle Developer Suite
    Oracle Developer Suite is a suite of development tools released by the Oracle Corporation. The principal components were initially Oracle Forms and Oracle Reports, although the suite was later expanded to include JDeveloper amongst others.-History:...
    
    
• Business intelligence
  Business intelligence
  Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....
  
  
  • Oracle Business Intelligence 10g
  • Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (Oracle BAM)
  • Oracle Crystal Ball - does "predictive modeling, forecasting, and simulation"
  • Oracle Discoverer
    Oracle Discoverer
    Oracle Discoverer is a tool-set for ad-hoc querying, reporting, data analysis, and Web-publishing for the Oracle Database environment. Oracle Corporation markets it as a business intelligence product...
    
    
  • Data hubs
  • Oracle BI Publisher
    Oracle BI Publisher
    Oracle XML Publisher is Oracle Corporation's new reporting technology. It was originally developed to solve the reporting problems faced by Oracle Applications. It was first released with Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.10 in 2003...
    
    
  • Oracle Reports
    Oracle Reports
    Oracle Reports is a tool for developing reports against data stored in an Oracle database. Oracle Reports consists of Oracle Reports Developer and Oracle Application Server Reports Services .-Output formats:The report output can be delivered directly to a printer or saved in the following...
    
     services
• Systems management
  Systems management
  Systems management refers to enterprise-wide administration of distributed systems including computer systems. Systems management is strongly influenced by network management initiatives in telecommunications....
  
  
  • Oracle Enterprise Manager
    Oracle Enterprise Manager
    The computer application Oracle Enterprise Manager aims to manage software produced by Oracle Corporation as well as by some non-Oracle entities.-Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control :...
    
    
  • Web service
    Web service
    A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...
    
    s manager
• User interaction
  • Oracle Beehive
    Oracle Beehive
    Oracle Beehive is collaboration platform software developed by Oracle Corporation that combines email, team collaboration, instant messaging, and conferencing in a single solution...
    
     collaboration software
  • Oracle Portal
  • Oracle WebCenter
    Oracle WebCenter
    Owned by Oracle, Oracle WebCenter is a product built on top of the JSF based Oracle Application Development Framework. It contains a set of components for building rich web applications, portals, and team collaboration/social sites...
    
    
  • Real-time collaboration
  • Unified messaging
    Unified messaging
    Unified Messaging is the integration of different electronic messaging and communications media technologies into a single interface, accessible from a variety of different devices....
    
    
  • Workspace
    Workspace
    Workspace is a term used in various branches of engineering and economic development.-Business development:Workspace refers to small premises provided, often by local authorities or economic development agencies, to help new businesses to establish themselves...
    
    s
• Content management
  Content management
  Content management, or CM, is the set of processes and technologies that support the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. In recent times this information is typically referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content...
  
  
  • Oracle Imaging and Process Management
    Oracle Imaging and Process Management
    Oracle WebCenter Imaging is Oracle Corporation's combined document management and business process management suite, marketed as a component of the Oracle Fusion Middleware portfolio of products.Oracle WebCenter Imaging provides organisations with a software solution focused on process-oriented...
    
    
  • Web content management
  • Records management
    Records management
    Records management, or RM, is the practice of maintaining the records of an organization from the time they are created up to their eventual disposal...
    
    
  • Enterprise search
    Enterprise search
    Enterprise search is the practice of making content from multiple enterprise-type sources, such as databases and intranets, searchable to a defined audience.-Enterprise search summary:...
    
    
  • Digital asset management
    Digital asset management
    Digital asset management consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets...
    
    
  • Email archiving
  • Oracle Universal Content Management: In November 2006 Oracle Corporation acquired Stellent, a software-development company (based in Eden Prairie
    Eden Prairie, Minnesota
    As of the census of 2000, there were 54,901 people, 20,457 households, and 14,579 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 21,026 housing units at an average density of 649.2 per square mile...
    
    , Minnesota
    Minnesota
    Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
    
    ) which provided content management system
    Content management system
    A content management system is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based...
    
    s. Stellent's primary product, "Universal Content Management" (UCM), the foundation of most of its other content-management products, became Oracle Universal Content Management as a part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack. Oracle retained the name "Stellent" for this suite of applications. (Before 2001 Stellent had used the name "Intranet Solutions" and called its product first "IntraDoc!", then briefly "Xpedio".
• Identity management
  Identity management
  Identity management is a broad administrative area that deals with identifying individuals in a system and controlling access to the resources in that system by placing restrictions on the established identities of the individuals.Identity management is multidisciplinary and covers many...
  
  
  • Enterprise Single sign-on
    Single sign-on
    Single sign-on is a property of access control of multiple related, but independent software systems. With this property a user logs in once and gains access to all systems without being prompted to log in again at each of them...
    
    
  • Oracle Entitlements Server
  • Oracle Identity Manager
  • Oracle Access Manager
  • Oracle Adaptive Access Manager
    Oracle Adaptive Access Manager
    The Oracle Adaptive Access Manager is part of the Oracle Identity Management product suite that provides access control services to web and other online applications.- History :...
    
    
  • Oracle Information Rights Management
• Grid infrastructure
  • Services registry
    Registry
    -Computing:* Windows Registry, a database of configuration settings in Microsoft Windows operating systems* Domain name registry, an organization that manages the registration of top-level internet domain names...
    
    
  • application-server
    Application server
    An application server is a software framework that provides an environment in which applications can run, no matter what the applications are or what they do...
    
     security
• Performance
  • Oracle Web Cache

Integration, pricing and bundling

Apart from selling licenses to run OFM components,
Oracle Corporation also markets a managed option via the SaaS

Saas

SAAS is an abbreviation for* Social Accountability Accreditation Services* Software as a service * Student Awards Agency for Scotland* Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences* South Australian Ambulance Service...

 Oracle On Demand service.

External links

• Oracle Fusion Middleware
• Intel support for Fusion
• KMWorld article on Oracle acquisition of Stellent
• Official Homepage
• Yahoo! Group for Stellent Users
• Oracle forum for Stellent/UCM product suite
• Content.FM Content Management On Air. Broadcasting news, product updates and general purpose information about ECM and Oracle Universal Content Management