Oracle Fusion Middleware is taking on the enterprise challenge of bringing together the Oracle database and Oracle applications stacks. It is the middle-tier between them. Fusion Middleware is Oracle's go-forward foundation for the fusion of products between the database and application stack. Oracle has acquired many companies over the last decade for their technology or market share. This has taken it to a position of having excellent software. To achieve interoperability, a common layer had to be formed to fuse together the existing technologies, create efficiencies, and provide consistent delivery of software applications. The following figure illustrates the main categories of products making up the current Oracle product stack:

The Middleware product category contains Oracle Fusion Middleware (FMW), which forms the core of Oracle's Application Integration Architecture (AIA). It is the foundation for Oracle's fusion applications and software suites, such as Oracle BI, Oracle Hyperion Oracle Web Center, and so on.