But SAP spokesman Saswato Das dismissed Oracle's announcement.

"Basically, our Business Suite 7 is the most comprehensive and flexible suite of applications on the market," Das said. "Oracle has been talking about Fusion for a long time, and our suite is available now. They're playing catch-up."

Meanwhile, the work ahead of companies looking to adopt Fusion Applications sooner rather than later is "not trivial," said Floyd Teter, head of the Oracle Applications Users Group's Fusion Council, which has been educating group members about the upcoming applications release.

One key step customers should take is to catalogue their application customizations and determine which ones could be retired, Teter said. "A lot of us have done a lot of custom things. If you're a long-term Oracle customer, it's easy to lose track."

Fusion Applications will also require some companies to acquire new development skills, Teter said. "A lot of us run a lot of customizations through MOD PL_SQL. That's going to be gone. The skill set now is more Java and specifically [Java Enterprise Edition]. You also better have some knowledge of JavaScript."