Oracle Technology-Related Points From 10 Things You Can Do Now To Prepare For Fusion Applications - Part 2

Wrapping up my review of Dr. Nadia Bendjedou’s "Oracle E-Business Customers: 10 Things You Can Do Now To Prepare For Fusion Applications"...

Nadia’s final three Oracle technology-related points were:

• Secure Your Global Enterprise
• Consider Grid Computing
• Centralize Your Management Lifecycle

SECURE YOUR GLOBAL ENTERPRISE

The basic concepts here were: 1) centralize access control by implementing single sign-on and access authorization across all enterprise applications, and integrating that access control with your HR, CRM, and partner data; 2) Ensure data privacy by restricting users and administrators to seeing only the data required to perform their jobs while still allowing for configurable security policies (i.e., IP address or time of day at access request); 3) Enable compliance by implementing content management for document retention and audit.

CONSIDER GRID COMPUTING

This section consisted of a very good, if somewhat brief, overview of grid computing. If you’re unfamiliar with grid computing, this portion of the presentation would be a very good start. In short, the benefits of the grid were listed as maximizing quality of service, enabling rapid change, minimizing IT cost, and better utilization of assets.

CENTRALIZE YOUR LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT

The message of this section was to reduce cost and risk while increasing agility by utilizing Oracle’s Applications Management Pack and Enterprise Manager Grid Control. An interesting footnote on future direction was the statement: "Grid Control will be the hub of Oracle Applications Lifecycle Management. Begin preparing for Oracle Fusion Applications by leveraging Grid Control today" - a pretty clear statement of future direction.

TETER’S TAKE

I’m in complete agreement on all three of these points. The need to security if fairly self-evident, so I won’t waste space here regurgitating all the reasoning you’ve probably read somewhere else already. Grid control is great for spreading big workloads over a number of boxes - especially cheaper boxes. Although I’m not a DBA, I understand that one of the more complex elements in a successful grid is load balancing - which is where the Enterprise Manager Grid Control product comes in, so I’m also on board with centralizing lifecycle management.

IN SUMMARY

Well, if you're an E-Business user, now you have it: the 10 things you can do now to prepare ro Fusion Applications, with my (somewhat questionable) opinion thrown in to boot! I’ve spent a lot of time, energy, and blog space writing about this presentation...which should tell you that I found it very valuable and well worth sharing. I've picked a few nits, all mentioned in my review. Nevertheless, this was probably the most valuable presentation I attended at Oracle OpenWorld this year (Jose Lazeres’ Intro to SOA session was a very close second). Great stuff and very well thought out. In fact, I’ll be using Nadia’s info as a framework for JPL’s roadmap and for the work I do with the OAUG’s Oracle Fusion Council. I hope you find value in this info as well.

LATE NOTE: If you were unable to attend Oracle OpenWorld or this particular presentation, you can now download the presentation materials here (you’ll have to utilize the search engine - I recommend searching by Speaker Name). PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel users will find a similar presentation tailored for them at the same place.

Oracle Technology-Related Points From 10 Things You Can Do Now To Prepare For Fusion Applications - Part 1

Continuing my review of Dr. Nadia Bendjedou’s presentation titled "Oracle E-Business Suite Customers: 10 Things You Can Do Now To Prepare For Oracle Fusion Applications"...

The first four Oracle technology-related points Nadia laid out were:

• Consider Master Data Management
• Move to SOA-Based Integration
• Extend Your Business Intelligence Portfolio
• Adopt Enterprise Reporting & Publishing

CONSIDER MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT

The upshot of this point is similar to Oracle’s "Single Source of Truth" message: consolidate master information into a single master repository, clean and enrich data centrally and distribute, synchronize data for a consistent enterprise view, and leverage master data to improve customer and product centric business process and analytics. The benefits of Master Data Management are cleaner data for business intelligence reporting, and the creation of an enterprise-wide data repository to simplify the upgrade to Fusion.

MOVE TO SOA-BASED INTEGRATION

The compelling recommendation here is to document all external interfaces. What are they and what business flows through them? Is the interface public (such as one found within Oracle iRep) or private ("home-grown", which would be considered a customization)? What are the usage characteristics of each interface (volume, business criticality, frequency, synchronous or asynchronous)? Is the interface build on a hub-and-spoke or point-to-point model? There is also quite a bit of info on Oracle’s future directions in this area, such as the Pre-Built and Orchestrated Process Flows, the Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite, and Oracle iRep.

EXTEND YOUR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PORTFOLIO

Much as I regret saying anything about this presentation that may be construed as a negative comment, this section was mostly a plug for Oracle’s Daily Business Intelligence ("DBI") and Oracle Business Intelligence - Enterprise Edition ("OBI EE"). Nevertheless, the idea of leveraging analytics to manage your enterprise and track the performance of business process execution is very important to the SOA and Fusion concepts.

ADOPT ENTERPRISE REPORTING AND PUBLISHING

The vision here is to move away from legacy reporting tools (Oracle Reports comes to mind as an example) and move to a standard reporting tool that provides both web-based and paper-based output in any one of a variety of format choices - yup, we’re talking XML Publisher.

TETER’S TAKE

I’m in enthusiastic agreement with the idea of Master Data Management. I’ve always believed that an enterprise is best served by centralizing the data so that it can be managed by the data professionals and federating the reporting so that the information output can be managed by the various types of business professionals according to their needs.

As a System Engineer, I’m also heavily in favor of beginning the move to SOA-Based Integration by documenting all external interfaces. This should be part of every enterprise’s technical view of their enterprise architecture, so that it can form the basis of the integration efforts that will be at the heart of a Fusion Applications implementation.

While I recognize the value of business intelligence, I do wish the presentation would have included more conceptual information on that value rather than simply "plugging" the Oracle BI products.

As far as Enterprise Reporting and Publishing, XML Publisher is the next-generation reporting tool and cuts to the core of the Fusion vision. In my opinion, one of the best moves E-Business customers could make today to prepare for Fusion Apps would be to immediately stop any present or future development efforts using Oracle Reports and start using XML Publisher instead.

The final portion of my review on this presentation comes next...

Best Practices From 10 Things You Can Do Now To Prepare For Fusion Applications

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.

10 Things You Can Do To Prepare for Fusion Applications

Although we won't see Fusion Applications until 2007 or an integrated Fusion Applications Suite until 2008, many components of the Fusion technology stack are available today to help prepare for the arrival of Fusion Applications.

The Fusion message at Oracle OpenWorld 2006, in multiple sessions and from multiple presenters, was very consistent: don’t wait for the release of Fusion Applications to start preparing for Fusion. The Fusion tools and technologies available today can be leveraged to extend the value of Oracle applications and provide a head start on preparing for Fusion Applications.

The gist of the Fusion message was presented in Dr. Nadia Bendjedou’s very popular session "Oracle E-Business Suite Customers: 10 Things You Can Do Now to Prepare for Oracle Fusion Applications". The session was moved to the largest available room on Tuesday, and was repeated on Thursday due to popular demand. Although this particular presentation was directed to E-Business Suite users, similar sessions were provided for the remaining Oracle Apps product lines. In fact, the presenters coordinated with each other to assure a consistent message across the board. The "10 Things" from Nadia's presentation were:

1. Rethink your customization strategy
2. Consider Master Data Management (MDM)
3. Move to SOA-based integration
4. Extend your business intelligence portfolio
5. Adopt enterprise reporting and publishing
6. Secure your global enterprise
7. Consider grid computing
8. Centralize your lifecycle management
9. Upgrade to the e-Business Suite R12
10. Prepare a Fusion project plan

Fortunately, Nadia was kind enough to provide me with a copy of her presentation slides for reference. I also have rather extensive notes of my own. Rather than write one incredibly long-winded post to cover all 10 points, I'll break these up into small pieces that will be posted over the next few days.

OpenWorld 2006 Is A Wrap!

Oracle OpenWorld 2006 is now a wrap. The parties and networking are all finished. I have been PowerPointed into a gelatinous blob of bullet-point overload.

All in all, I came out with several "take aways" despite the bullet-point overload. In particular, I was pleased to find more of an international mix with the attendees this year. We had a true melting pot of people in substantial numbers from across the globe, which also meant that we had a substantial variety of perspectives. I probably got at least as much new information from the international attendees as from the Oracle presentations.

As I see it, the conference highlights were:

• The Sunday Special Interest Group ("SIG") meetings, especially the OAUG Middleware SIG

• Jesper Anderson's "Ready for Change" scorecard assessment for potential Fusion customers

• Nadia Bendjedou's "Oracle E-Business Suite Customers: 10 Things You Can Do Now To Get Ready For Fusion"

• The strong emphasis on XML Publisher, Release 12, and using Fusion Middleware

No, the laser lights and hip-hop dancers did not make my list of highlights. However, the Beta release of the 11g database and the entry of Oracle into the Linux marketplace are also noteworthy. Although I may not write on either here, I will probably post something about each on www.itsafeature.com

Over the next few days, I'll be writing on each of my highlight points as I digest the mountains of notes I took on each subject. Stay tuned...

Solution Beacon's 11i Newsletter

Over the past few months, I've been writing a "Fusion Corner" column for Solution Beacon's 11i newsletter. As I've gotten more involved with the newsletter, I've developed an appreciation for it. Each edition of the newsletter is packed with detailed information and tips on working with the 11i E-Business Suite, and is well worth reading. Check out the newsletter for yourself here.

Survey Feedback Needed for Release 12 Demos

I wrote some time ago about Oracle's program to provide early web-based demos for the upcoming Release 12 of the E-Business Suite. Those of you participating in this program received email notice last week that the demos were ready to go, along with a website for downloading the demos.

The way the demo website works, customers download a demo session and provide feedback on the demo through a brief survey.

Well, it seems that lots of the demo sessions have been downloaded but Oracle has received very little feedback survey. I received the following email this morning:

Dear program participant,

A number of new E-Business Suite R12 demonstrations have been posted to the demo download page (see link below).

We are asking each program participant to complete at least one post-demo survey this week. If you haven't already done so, please take a moment to complete the survey associated with the demonstrations that you have watched.

The links to each post-demo survey can be found on the right-hand side of the demo download page, and should only take 3 to 5 minutes to complete.

Your feedback, via the post-demo surveys, is very important to the success of this program.

Thanks,

Oracle Applications Development Operations team

I'm a little concerned at receiving this email. Various customer groups, including OAUG, have pressured Oracle for pre-release demos for quite some time so that our members could start the upgrade planning process a bit earlier in the product lifecycle. We finally struck an agreement for a "test run" by promising some customer feedback that might help in preparing Oracle's value propositions for new product releases.

It appears that our test run may be failing because customers are not providing feedback on the demos, which greatly reduces the benefit to Oracle of providing these demos. I'm told there are plenty of hits and downloads to the website, but very few survey responses. If this continues to be the case, I'm quite sure this will be the last time Oracle conducts a program of this type for any product release.

If your organization is a participant in the Oracle E-Business Release 12 product demos program, please take some time before October 13th to provide feedback via the survey on the web demos you watch. Not only will your input influence the message Oracle puts out on Release 12, it will also increase the future probability of pre-release demos for other Oracle products.