More Interesting OpenWorld Stuff

After reading my post "OpenWorld Is Just Around The Corner", an old friend working in Oracle Support chastised me for not mentioning any of the numerous sessions sponsored by Support at OpenWorld. As a member of OAUG’s Customer Support Council, shame on me for not including a mention of Oracle Support. While applications support will not be one of my own focus areas this year, you may want to considering making it one of yours...the ability to understand and navigate through the Oracle support process is a valuable asset to any organization.

One presentation really worth attending is Session ID S281608 - "Manage Your Oracle Configurations with New Proactive, Automated Features in Oracle MetaLink". One of the presenters for this session is Oracle’s Jack Malloch. Jack is another friend, and has quite a bit of enthusiasm for his work. I promise that you will not be bored while Jack is presenting.

I've also spotted a few other support-related presentations that may be interesting. The session id's and titles for those sessions are:

S281605, A Technology Support Journey with Oracle Executives--A Panel Discussion
S281607, Beyond Reactive Support--Driving Operational Value with Proactive, Automated Support
S281617, How to Effectively Leverage the Global Support Center and Infrastructure
S281660, A Hidden Treasure: Oracle E-Business Suite Support Tools
S281676, How to Run an Effective Support Help Desk

OpenWorld Is Just Around The Corner

Oracle OpenWorld 2006, taking place from October 22 through 26, is just around the corner. Several people have asked my opinion on the value of OpenWorld, so I thought that posting my opinion might be worthwhile for others.

Back in the days of AppsWorld, I enjoyed the opportunities to network and wander from session to session. The networking and wandering opportunities shrank considerably since Oracle combined all their product conferences into one show. There are just too many people at OpenWorld to hope that you'll be able to network on an ad-hoc basis or walk into a session without pre-registering.

I was a bit frustrated in dealing with the logistics of the 30,000-plus attendees at last year's OpenWorld. I found the conference had outgrown my free-wheeling attendance style, and my inability to adjust detracted from the value of my conference attendance. I'm hoping to deal with the teeming masses and increase my take-away value from the conference this year by making more of an effort with advance planning in terms of what I want to learn.

I'm personally limiting my focus areas to Fusion Applicatons, Apps Technology, Release 12, and Project Management. Unfortunately, there are other areas I'd really like to include - Web Services and Financials come immediately to mind - but there too many scheduling conflicts arise if I expand my focus areas any further.

With my focus areas in mind, the following sessions look very interesting (I'm listing session id and session title).

S283031, OAUG Middleware SIG Meeting
S283174, The Path to Oracle Fusion
S284985, User Group Fusion Channel
S284947, OAUG Projects SIG

S281377, Technology Directions for Oracle Applications
S284701, Understand Fusion Applications: What Every Customer Needs To Know
S281415, Service-Enabling Oracle E-Business Suite (not in my focus but too interesting to miss)
S282408, Project Management Best Practices That Deliver Results

S281651, Oracle E-Business Suite Customers: 10 Things You Can Do Now to Prepare for Oracle Fusion Applications
S281709, Using Oracle Application Server 10g with Oracle E-Business Suite
S282316, Understanding the Value of Oracle Fusion for Financial Applications
S282968, An Introduction to BPEL (another session too interesting to pass up)

S281588, Road Map to Oracle Fusion: An Oracle Insight Program to Provide Recommendations on Your Path to Oracle Fusion
S281413, Using Oracle SOA Suite with Oracle E-Business Suite
S282318, Oracle Fusion Business Process Models
S280814, Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Updates
S281383, Deep Dive: Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 New Technology Stack

I also hear rumblings of a Sunday afternoon session to report on the results of the IOUC's Fusion Applications Customer Profiling initiative, but no such session has shown up in the on-line Content Catalog yet. The profiling info is a wonderful set of benchmarking data regarding the current state of Oracle apps customers, so I will be attending this session if it comes together.

So far as networking goes, I'm sticking with more of an ad-hoc approach. You now know my schedule for OpenWorld...look me up and we can swap thoughts on the conference. See you in San Francisco!

Preparing for Fusion Applications

"What preparations should my company make in preparing for Fusion Applications?" In my role with OAUG’s Fusion Council, I’ve been on the receiving end of this question several times over the past few months. After repeating my answer on several occasions, I thought it best to put it in writing.

First, recognize the scope of the change. The scope of the change is a move to Service-Oriented Architecture ("SOA")…or least each Oracle’s version of SOA. The move to SOA requires a significant conceptual shift. You can find a brief primer on the concepts here. Although I won’t push the issue here, the real question may be "What preparations should my company make in preparing to adopt SOA-based ERP applications?"

Having prefaced my comments, this is my "laundry list" for preparing for Fusion Applications:

1) Break down your business architecture based on high-level requirements. In simple terms, at least be able to address the writer’s best friends (who, what, when, where, why and how) for all aspects of your business.

2) Identify your choices and prepare a plan for each choice. Are Fusion Applications and E-Business 12 competing or complimentary choices for your organization? What about the PeopleSoft HR apps you’ve already integrated with the E-Business Financials? Could you stick with Siebel? In order to make the optimum choice for your organization, you should know each of your viable options and create a high-level plan for implementing each option.

3) Develop skills in Business Activity Monitoring ("BAM"), Business Process Execution Language ("BPEL"), data hubs, integrated analytics, portals, SOA concepts and web services. All of these technologies will be important components of the Fusion Applications environment.

4) Install Oracle Fusion Middleware and become familiar with it. Many of the components mentioned in item 3 are already available for use with Fusion Middleware. What better way to learn more about them than by working with Fusion Middleware?

5) Begin to consolidate your data respositories. The concept of a "Single Source of Truth" is at the heart of the Fusion Applications architecture. Consolidating your data respositories will be a significant step on the road to realizing that concept.

6) Identify customizations and begin to eliminate them. Customizations will very likely add to the complexity and cost of any upgrade or migration to Fusion Applications. Decommissioning those customizations beforehand will allow you to avoid those burdens.

PSST 2.0 - Want An Early Peek at Release 12?

In keeping with the buzz over anything that's version 2.0, I'm updating my original posting on the E-Business Suite Release 12 demos with a version 2.0.

I received an email this morning from the Oracle Applications Operations Team, announcing that the "live" demos of E-Business Suite Release 12 have been cancelled. The number of customers interested in the demo sessions was overwhelming, so much so that the live demo format simply would not work.

Oracle now plans to offer pre-recorded demos that can be downloaded and viewed at each customer's convenience. I will share the details here as they are announced by Oracle.