Well, I must admit that the "Cone of Silence" over Fusion Apps was lifted a bit today. Not as much as I'd personally like, but probably as much as Oracle is willing to lift it at this time (for understandable reasons, given the recent major changes at the company - they need some time to work things out).
Steve Miranda gave an excellent demonstration of the Fusion user interface in his presentation "Introducing Fusion Applications". In fact, Steve gave a very strong overall presentation. Personally, I think this should have been a keynote address for the conference. You can get a great summary of this and all of the Fusion Apps previews of the day, including some screen shots, here.
Cliff Godwin immediately followed Steve Miranda's presentation with another strong presentation on the upgrade plans for Fusion Applications. As usually, Cliff provided some of the best content of the entire conference. He confirmed that the upgrade to Fusion Apps from the other Oracle apps will be an "A to B" upgrade (which is a little different for those of us with a background in E-Business upgrades) - create a new instance, set up the instance, then move your data from the old instance to the new one. Transactions created during the upgrade will be captured using a "data stream" approach (more on this in a later article, I promise!). So, after seeing Cliff's presentation, I'm pretty convinced - moving to Fusion Applications will be an upgrade rather than a reimplementation.
Later in the day, Tim Dexter gave a great update on XML Publisher/BI Publisher. I like Tim's sessions because he puts his skin on the table. I thought it was pretty bold to email invoices from his demo environment to some attendees during the session. Tim also fessed up on things Publisher can't do, but provided some time for partners with products to fill those gaps...a pretty pragmatic approach to dealing with Publisher's limits.
I also had the pleasure of attending the Oracle Innovation Excellence award reception Tuesday evening. These awards were given to customers for innovation in using Fusion Middleware to extend the functionality of Oracle Apps. I had the wonderful opportunity to engage as a judge for this year's awards and, I have to say, the judging was very tough. There are some folks out there doing some very creative things with Fusion Middleware and Oracle Apps. I understand that Oracle plans to share these stories in some type of published booklet after the conference - be sure to get one when they come out.
I also had a chance to sit in on some sessions at the Unconference and the No Slide Zone. It's amazing how great presentations can be when the PowerPoint "crutch" is removed. I sure hope Oracle sticks with both these programs next year.
All in all, not a bad day...I feel like I'm getting my money's worth.
Steve Miranda gave an excellent demonstration of the Fusion user interface in his presentation "Introducing Fusion Applications". In fact, Steve gave a very strong overall presentation. Personally, I think this should have been a keynote address for the conference. You can get a great summary of this and all of the Fusion Apps previews of the day, including some screen shots, here.
Cliff Godwin immediately followed Steve Miranda's presentation with another strong presentation on the upgrade plans for Fusion Applications. As usually, Cliff provided some of the best content of the entire conference. He confirmed that the upgrade to Fusion Apps from the other Oracle apps will be an "A to B" upgrade (which is a little different for those of us with a background in E-Business upgrades) - create a new instance, set up the instance, then move your data from the old instance to the new one. Transactions created during the upgrade will be captured using a "data stream" approach (more on this in a later article, I promise!). So, after seeing Cliff's presentation, I'm pretty convinced - moving to Fusion Applications will be an upgrade rather than a reimplementation.
Later in the day, Tim Dexter gave a great update on XML Publisher/BI Publisher. I like Tim's sessions because he puts his skin on the table. I thought it was pretty bold to email invoices from his demo environment to some attendees during the session. Tim also fessed up on things Publisher can't do, but provided some time for partners with products to fill those gaps...a pretty pragmatic approach to dealing with Publisher's limits.
I also had the pleasure of attending the Oracle Innovation Excellence award reception Tuesday evening. These awards were given to customers for innovation in using Fusion Middleware to extend the functionality of Oracle Apps. I had the wonderful opportunity to engage as a judge for this year's awards and, I have to say, the judging was very tough. There are some folks out there doing some very creative things with Fusion Middleware and Oracle Apps. I understand that Oracle plans to share these stories in some type of published booklet after the conference - be sure to get one when they come out.
I also had a chance to sit in on some sessions at the Unconference and the No Slide Zone. It's amazing how great presentations can be when the PowerPoint "crutch" is removed. I sure hope Oracle sticks with both these programs next year.
All in all, not a bad day...I feel like I'm getting my money's worth.
2 comments:
Skin on table, heart on sleeve - Im just a sensitive kinda guy :0)
I had fun, I think the packed hot roomful of folks did too and I hope they got something out of it. Im impressed at the level of expertise coming from some folks - I have been plugging away at this for 3 years and now we are getting customers using it for what it was designed and believing in XMLP as a reporting tool.
We have to actually shake hands one of these daze.
With OAUG in my back yard next year - you'll have to come for supper :0)
Tim,
From my perspective, it looks like XMLP is really building momentum in the user community. In the E-Business segment, I think that customers not using XMLP will be in the minority by the time we get to OOW 2008.
Supper? What a generous offer! Do I look like the kind of guy that will turn down a free supper? - Floyd
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