Fusion Applications went into about a year ago. Four hundred customers have licensed the software, with about 100 having gone live with it, said Chris Leone, senior vice president of applications development, during a session at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. "The ramp-up and trajectory is just astronomical," he said. "Fusion's really here."

That adoption rate may not seem huge in light of Oracle's overall size but it should be kept in context, said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research.

"The one thing they've done is been very modest about their deployment [rate]," he said. "They've really been trying to get their customers up and running. It's a good start."

However, it's worth watching to see if Oracle will be able to speed the pace of adoption significantly within a couple of years, Wang added.

Oracle is employing a rapid cadence for Fusion Applications development, with a fifth release due out soon. Such a cycle is more in line with the pace set by SaaS (software-as-a-service) vendors. It gives Oracle the ability to quickly tweak the software and lets customers adopt new features in manageable pieces.