As Dr. Nadia Bendjedou made her "10 Things You Can Do Now To Prepare For Fusion Applications" presentation, she segregated her ten points into the two categories of Best Practices and Oracle Technology. I’ll address the three points composing Best Practices in this post and tackle the Oracle Technology points in subsequent postings.
RETHINK YOUR CUSTOMIZATION STRATEGY
Nadia’s thinking in this area consisted of two recommendations: take inventory of your customizations and engineer for the future.
Most of us have customized the Oracle applications to some extent. The suggestion here is to take inventory of your customizations. What customizations do you have? How were they built? Are they still required? Do new features make them obsolete? Is there business value in keeping them?
Engineering for the future suggests that we consider tailoring the configuration of the apps rather than customizing where possible and, when customization is still necessary, customize in conformance with Oracle Fusion Architecture. Recently added capabilities such as the Personalization features with the Oracle Applications Framework ("OAF") or the ability to build business processes with the combination of the ARIS tool and BPEL toolset make it easier to comply with the Fusion Architecture.
UPGRADE TO R12
The voice-over for this portion of the presentation presented the strongest case for upgrading. R12 is the first version of the E-Business Suite to run on Fusion Middleware, making it iteration on the road to Fusion Apps. In addition, many of the technology components and new features in R12 will carry over to the Fusion Applications - upgrading to R12 allows you to move to the Fusion Architecture in an incremental manner.
PREPARE A FUSION PROJECT PLAN
The idea behind this point is to align your technical strategy with your business strategy, then incrementally move toward adopting Fusion Middleware and Applications to build experience and skills with Fusion technology before adopting Fusion Applications. Considerations should be made for aligning instance strategy with business objectives and business intelligence needs. The plan should also include the first pilot projects for the various Fusion Architecture components (database, middleware, and apps).
TETER’S TAKE
I’m definitely on board with Nadia’s thoughts on rethinking customizations and preparing a Fusion project plan (although I consider the latter to be more of a roadmap than a project plan). However, I can’t say that I’m entirely in agreement with the need to upgrade to R12. Upgrading to Fusion Applications will be possible from both 11.5.10 and R12, so I’m not compelled to upgrade to R12 before going to Fusion Apps. In addition, I should be able to leverage the Fusion Middleware by integrating the apps server with my E-Business environment. My thinking is that upgrading to R12 is a decision that is best made after considering whether the new functionality from the upgrade holds compelling value for your enterprise versus the stability offered by leveraging Oracle’s Applications Unlimited and Lifetime Support policies to stay on 11.5.10 until upgrading makes sense for you. You can read more on this in my article, "The Importance of Being 12" - it's in the August 2006 archives on this site
Well, that’s my perspective on the "Best Practices" portion of the presentation. Next I’ll take on at least part of the Oracle Technology points.
RETHINK YOUR CUSTOMIZATION STRATEGY
Nadia’s thinking in this area consisted of two recommendations: take inventory of your customizations and engineer for the future.
Most of us have customized the Oracle applications to some extent. The suggestion here is to take inventory of your customizations. What customizations do you have? How were they built? Are they still required? Do new features make them obsolete? Is there business value in keeping them?
Engineering for the future suggests that we consider tailoring the configuration of the apps rather than customizing where possible and, when customization is still necessary, customize in conformance with Oracle Fusion Architecture. Recently added capabilities such as the Personalization features with the Oracle Applications Framework ("OAF") or the ability to build business processes with the combination of the ARIS tool and BPEL toolset make it easier to comply with the Fusion Architecture.
UPGRADE TO R12
The voice-over for this portion of the presentation presented the strongest case for upgrading. R12 is the first version of the E-Business Suite to run on Fusion Middleware, making it iteration on the road to Fusion Apps. In addition, many of the technology components and new features in R12 will carry over to the Fusion Applications - upgrading to R12 allows you to move to the Fusion Architecture in an incremental manner.
PREPARE A FUSION PROJECT PLAN
The idea behind this point is to align your technical strategy with your business strategy, then incrementally move toward adopting Fusion Middleware and Applications to build experience and skills with Fusion technology before adopting Fusion Applications. Considerations should be made for aligning instance strategy with business objectives and business intelligence needs. The plan should also include the first pilot projects for the various Fusion Architecture components (database, middleware, and apps).
TETER’S TAKE
I’m definitely on board with Nadia’s thoughts on rethinking customizations and preparing a Fusion project plan (although I consider the latter to be more of a roadmap than a project plan). However, I can’t say that I’m entirely in agreement with the need to upgrade to R12. Upgrading to Fusion Applications will be possible from both 11.5.10 and R12, so I’m not compelled to upgrade to R12 before going to Fusion Apps. In addition, I should be able to leverage the Fusion Middleware by integrating the apps server with my E-Business environment. My thinking is that upgrading to R12 is a decision that is best made after considering whether the new functionality from the upgrade holds compelling value for your enterprise versus the stability offered by leveraging Oracle’s Applications Unlimited and Lifetime Support policies to stay on 11.5.10 until upgrading makes sense for you. You can read more on this in my article, "The Importance of Being 12" - it's in the August 2006 archives on this site
Well, that’s my perspective on the "Best Practices" portion of the presentation. Next I’ll take on at least part of the Oracle Technology points.
1 comment:
This is nice article. I understand
The idea behind this point is to align your technical strategy with your business strategy, then incrementally move toward adopting Fusion Middleware and Applications to build experience. Who are interesting visit the site business strategy
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