Oracle went a long way Thursday to mollify partners who resell JD Edwards business applications. At its partner summit for JD Edwards resellers and ISVs, Oracle presented a strong support scenario and promised to work closely with rival IBM to ensure no disruption in JD Edwards implementations.“Our strategy around JD Edwards, and for small and medium-sized businesses in particular, won’t unfold unless we have IBM as a partner,” Oracle President Charles Phillips said. In a keynote speech, Philips outlined Oracle’s plan to support the JD Edwards product line, including its World and EnterpriseOne suites, through and beyond the decade, as Oracle develops its Fusion program to integrate JD Edwards technology into the Oracle platform.Phillips described a smooth transition through Fusion. “It’s a process where there will be a series of enhancements slowly evolving,” he said.Although releases of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and World suites will continue, migration to Fusion will start in mid-2007. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is a complete suite of modular, pre-integrated industry-specific business applications. World is JD Edwards’ leading application suite for the IBM iSeries platform. Oracle took over JD Edwards when it purchased PeopleSoft in late 2004.Several Oracle partners said they were satisfied by the support and transition plans.Martin Green, president of Brij, a JD Edwards reseller in Greensboro, N.C., said he heard that Oracle was “Darth Vader,” but that had not turned out to be the case. “This hasn’t been what I expected at all,” he said. The Oracle-IBM collaboration “is going to be interesting,” he said. “I think it’s a great thing they are working together. You heard questions about (IBM’s iSeries servers and DB2), but I don’t think Oracle has said what it’s going to do yet.” The companies which ultimately use JD Edwards need to be assured there will be no disruptions, and Thursday’s conference took a big step toward that end, said Chip Jackson, practice director of Rapidigm, a systems integrator and PeopleSoft customer. “Having a meeting like this is critical for setting the long-term direction and strategy for those of us who are connected to the JD Edwards product suite,” he said.“I’m impressed with the program,” said Tony Kirk, president and CEO of Enter-prise Solutions Group of Fairfax, Va., a systems integrator and VAR. “My company was a PeopleSoft customer for seven years and we are transitioning to JD Edwards. I like Oracle because you have the whole technology stack.” Technology Industry