2025.6.24 Oracle PLM—The Next Generation (Commentary)

Oracle Applications Summit Showcases AI-Powered SaaS, Data Intelligence, and Modernized User Experience

Key Takeaways

• Oracle combines its role as a cloud hyperscaler and applications provider to deliver true AI-powered SaaS, including tools like AI Agent Studio for building virtual AI employees.
• By showcasing a modern user experience through Redwood, Oracle is encouraging customers to transition from legacy systems like Oracle Agile to its Oracle Fusion Cloud PLM solutions.
• Oracle Fusion Cloud PLM shows promise to help companies converge their PLM, ERP, and manufacturing systems into a single cloud enterprise solution set eliminating the need for integrations and centralizing the digital data into a single source of truth.

The Oracle Applications summit began with Mr. Steve Miranda, their Executive Vice President of Fusion Applications Development, emphasizing Oracle’s position as both an application and technology provider. While all PLM vendors are leaning into the usage of AI agents, Oracle is taking the approach of enabling users to create their own AI agents to solve business problems. He highlighted Oracle’s leadership in training Large Language Models (LLMs) and its status as a leading cloud provider. He stressed that Oracle offers true Software as a Service (SaaS), not merely hosted services on someone else’s cloud, which reinforces their position to deploy the next generation of AI-powered applications.^[1]

Besides making AI agents available to its customers for use, Oracle is also using them to support its own business activities. They are also introducing impressive new ways for customers to create their own workforce of AI agents and agent teams. The introduction of AI Agent Studio empowers end users to create, deploy, and manage AI agents that easily integrate with key components of Oracle’s Fusion Cloud Applications. The studio has a quickly expanding library of user-focused templates that leverage a variety of LLMs to create interactive agentic teams that can solve a variety of business problems. While AI Agent studio was created to enable seamless functioning inside the Fusion applications, it can also manage an array of third-party system integrations enabling users to leverage that data in the organization’s agentic architecture.

An interesting differentiator for Oracle’s AI Agent Studio is Oracle’s deep experience in Human Capital Management (HCM) for employee resource planning and work management that is being leveraged in their vision for virtual employees (AI agents). Using the Agent Studio, virtual workers can easily be programmed and managed within existing business workflows in what looks a lot like a human worker organization chart.

Mr. T.K. Anand, EVP of Oracle Analytics, followed with a deep dive into Oracle Applications Data Intelligence strategy, where data intelligence falls at the center of data management, analytics, applications, and AI. He discussed the integration of Fusion data intelligence with Salesforce and introduced the concept of a “data lake house” combining the features of a data lake and a data warehouse. Data lake houses offer flexible data storage while enabling better performance and data governance of structured data and supporting a platform for optimal analytics. Mr. Anand also touched upon the use of AI optimization for risk identification and mitigation within supply chain command centers.

Rounding out the first day, Ms. Jenny Lam, Senior VP of UX Design Leadership, concluded the sessions with an update on Oracle Redwood momentum. She highlighted the enhancements in user experience by using Redwood to showcase a new simplified user experience that responds to natural language commands and reduces the visual clutter on the screen. The interface is designed to be minimalist and accessible making interactions simple and reducing training requirements. CIMdata applauds this approach to facilitating users.

While the first day covered the broad scope of the Fusion Applications and overall technology roadmap, day two featured a breakout program for Supply Chain Management and Manufacturing. As shown in the figure, Oracle envisions product development as an integrated function in a business’s supply chain and makes the point that managing product attributes outside of that context can be limiting.

Oracle Fusion Cloud PLM as integrated into the Full Supply Chain
(Courtesy of Oracle)

In the broader area of Supply Chain, major investment themes in manufacturing, procurement, and operations are focused on product innovations that feed supply chain resilience, which emphasizes their eventual goal of an increasingly autonomous supply chain. Smart Operations offers a central application for manufacturing and digital work instructions that can easily be deployed to operators in work cells. Integrating model-based definition (MBD) into manufacturing work instructions and digital supply chain is clearly an opportunity that favors an integrated product development / manufacturing / digital supply chain ecosystem.

The Future of Oracle Agile

It is no secret that many companies still rely on Oracle’s Agile product despite its announced end of life (EOL) in December 2027. As stated in previous CIMdata commentaries on Oracle, Oracle Agile relies on some middleware used in other products, however, based on our conversations at the event, this deadline will not be extended because the program’s foundational components now have definitive EOL dates. Oracle believes that the user experience improvements in the Oracle Fusion Cloud PLM application will drive remaining customers to the cloud, particularly if they are already using Oracle for business applications.

Conclusions

Oracle is positioned as both a leading applications provider and hyperscaler, enabling it to offer true AI-powered SaaS through tools like AI Agent Studio, which lets users build and manage virtual AI employees within business workflows. The company is advancing data intelligence by integrating analytics, data management, and AI—highlighted by its “data lake house” approach and AI-driven risk management in supply chains. Oracle is also investing in modernizing the user experience with Redwood and transitioning customers from legacy systems like Oracle Agile to its enhanced Fusion Cloud PLM solutions, aiming for a seamless, resilient, and increasingly autonomous enterprise ecosystem. CIMdata looks forward to the evolution of Fusion Cloud PLM.

^[1] Research for this paper was partially supported by Oracle.