In addition, Fusion Applications rely on Oracle's JDeveloper IDE (integrated development environment), rather than other Java development tools like Eclipse.

For many companies, there will be plenty of time to plan, since the first version of Fusion Applications won't include certain functional areas.

The lack of manufacturing has prompted the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, which uses E-Business Suite, to wait for a future version, said Teter, who is a project manager at the lab. "When I get a full-functionality replacement, we'll look at it. In the meantime, we'll continue to stay current on EBS."

But Teter said the vendor's work on Fusion has produced impressive results, particularly in regards to user experience.

Earlier in his keynote, Ellison turned to Oracle's recently announced Exadata 2 appliance for data warehousing and transaction processing. He claimed the machine widely outperforms and is much less expensive than competing technologies, such as from IBM, calling it "the fastest computer that has ever been built to run data warehousing applications."