At Oracle's Collaborate 2006 user conference in Nashville, Tennessee, last week, the company announced that it will indefinitely support and upgrade the products it gained through its acquisitions of PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems, as well as its own line of applications.

Oracle had previously committed to support the products only through 2013.

Jesper Andersen, Oracle's senior vice president of application strategy, said the move was made to ease the fears of users of the older products. "We have 30,000 customers and need to make sure we treat them well [so] they'll stay with Oracle a long time," he said.

Pat Dues, president of the independent Oracle Applications Users Group, said the Atlanta-based organization plans to poll its members to get a collective judgment of the announcement. The OAUG was a co-sponsor of the Collaborate event. Speaking for herself, Dues said Oracle's move does make sense because it relieves customers from any pressure of a forced migration to Fusion. Some companies had concerns about the cost of moving to Fusion, she noted.

Dues, also project manager for the city of Las Vegas and a user of the Oracle E-Business Suite, said her operation is interested in moving to Fusion and its next-generation technology. "We're anticipating by bringing these applications together, we'll get the best of PeopleSoft and Siebel," she said.