Fusion On A Shoestring

You ever have one of those days when you realize the workload has gotten overwhelming? Too many things to do for too many different people who all want their stuff now? For me, today is one of those days. I handle days like this by going incommunicado...I don't go to work, I don't take calls, I don't check my email, I don't Twitter. No contact with the outside world until I knock a few things off the list. That's what I'm doing today. Now, the fact that I've been feeling a bit under the weather and took a sick day to get better helps this strategy work. Nevertheless, I must admit that I'm home mostly to knock some work out - the rest time is almost secondary.

One of those items I need to knock out is this particular post. The ideas here have been on my mind for a few weeks but really just started insisting that I write about them in the last week. When an idea grabs hold like that, I don't get much sleep until I write it up. I'd really like to get some sleep tonight (despite my discounting the importance of rest in the last paragraph, you've got to get some sooner or later), so here we go.

Just before and during Collaborate, I spoke with quite a few customers in a quandary over the whole Oracle Fusion thing. They want to get going with moving to Fusion, but most just lack the budget or funding to really get going. It's an expensive proposition and, in the current economy, finding money to upgrade is a challenge. So the issue is "what can I do now without spending a lot of money"? In other words, how you prepare for Oracle Fusion on a shoestring budget? After kicking the idea around a bit and talking it over with a few people, I have five brief ideas.

Patch Up To Current

Patch up to the latest version of software you already own, while not free, is relatively inexpensive. It's also a great way to eliminate many problems that you may run into if you're not current on your Oracle patches.

What to I mean by patch up to current? If you're on E-Business Suite 11i, get to 11.5.10.2. If you're on E-Business Release 12, be on 12.04. As part of doing so, check Oracle Metalink's "Certify" and make sure that you're on the latest releases of your middleware, database, and operating system products certified for your particular apps version - patch up or upgrade those components if you're not (and it's usually a good idea to patch up or upgrade these components before upgrading the apps suite).

Identify Your Customizations and Work Out A Plan For Each One

The most difficult and, frankly, the riskiest part of an upgrade to Fusion Architecture is and will be migrating customizations into that new environment. For example, if you've got some custom mod/plsql work, that stuff won't run in R12 (there is no supported mod/plsql in R12). Custom views or tables? You can't look to Oracle to anticipate your customizations and build a migration path as part of the product, for obvious cost reasons. Don't even get me started on custom Oracle Workflow processes.

My advice to avoid the pain and cost of moving your customizations forward? First, identify them. Second, map the functionality to the E-Business Suite and see if they can be eliminated. Some of those customizations you've been moving forward since 10.7SC can now be replaced by "vanilla" functionality. Third, if you can't replace the customization, plan out exactly how you'll bring it into the Oracle Fusion Architecture. Will you remodel a custom business process in BPEL? How about moving custom reports to BI Publisher?

Learn the Middleware Technology

The Fusion Architecture is really dominated by Fusion Middleware...if you understand the middleware, you're well on your way to understanding the entire Fusion Architecture. The difficult part? Fusion Middleware is a large and rapidly expanding category of Oracle products. It's a challenge to develop the needed detailed technical understanding of these products just due to the breadth of the product line. My suggestion here is to take an incremental approach, learning one key component or group of components (such as ADF or the Business Process Analysis tools) at a time through hands-on experience. And the best way to do this is by leveraging the Oracle Technology Network.

I'm continually amazed by the number of customers who don't know about the Oracle Technology Network ("OTN"). Great forums for talking about and trouble-shooting Oracle technology, best practice centers for extending Oracle applications with Fusion Middleware (EBS, PeopleSoft and Siebel), opportunities to download and try out Oracle technology and tools...the list goes on and on. You'll find most of the Fusion Middleware components available for download and exploration for free, the limitation here being that you can't build anything for a production environment without purchasing the appropriate license. OTN is the best means for learning the technology and taking a "try before you buy" approach to ramping up your knowledge and skills.

Build a Roadmap

Consider the core functions of your enterprise. Then consider what Oracle's Fusion-related products offer in terms of enhancing those core functions or expanding into new ones. You'll see some elements of Fusion Architecture that add value for you and some that don't. Limit your uptake to only those that offer enough value to make sense for you. Then build a plan with tasks and dates for the uptake. That's all there is to roadmapping...but it's a lot tougher than it sounds here.

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

The Oracle Fusion domain is changing rapidly. New products, sunsetting technologies, more acquisitions...the rate of change is dizzying. You'll need to keep track of those changes and adapt where appropriate. There are several great ways to keep track of the changes, but I've personally had my best luck with the Oracle Applications Users Group ("OAUG"). I get quite a bit of benefit from hearing the discussions between users about the changes and developments in the Fusion domain. I think these discussions and information exchanges will have even more value with the release of the Knowledge Factory.

As Chair of the OAUG Fusion Council this year, I'll do my best to get info pushed out for everyone as soon as it happens, both through the Knowledge Factory and this blog. In fact, the Fusion Council has a surprise or two in the works for sharing information about the evolution of the Fusion Architecture. Stay tuned!

At any rate, that's what I've got on my mind. As always, I encourage your thoughts and comments...

Time

Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can't put it off another day
I don't care what others say
They say we don't listen anyway
Time has come today
(Hey)
- From "Time" by The Chambers Brothers

Now that Oracle has stretched out Premier Support for E-Business 11i customers, I'm wondering what those customers will do with the extra year? In my shop, we view the extension as a great opportunity to do additional work in extending our 11.5.10.2 EBS apps with Fusion Middleware...especially in terms of driving integration with external apps up the tech stack as part of the move to BPEL-based integration. I know I'll feel much better when I can close down database ports and retire custom interfaces by replacing them with exposed EBS APIs and loosely-coupled web services. The bonus here is that using the SOA Suite tools will help prepare both our EBS environment and our people for our later moves toward Fusion architecture.

So now that you know my plans, how about sharing yours?

Springtime In The Rockies - It's A Wrap

It's a wrap for Collaborate 08. Observations, thoughts and highlights include the following:

• Oracle's announcement extending Premier Support for E-Business 11.5.10 for an additional year is a great relief for most E-Business customers, who should all be grateful to the OAUG Customer Support Council for advocating this change with Oracle execs. I suspect many of those customers will delay any upgrade to R12 or Fusion Applications as a result. The delay also makes Solution Beacon's new book, "The ABCs of Workflow for E-Business Suite Release 11i and Release 12" very relevant for EBS users.
  

• I heard a great number of statements about bugs and rumors of bugs in the Payables module of EBS Release 12. I'm looking forward to the releases of 12.05 and 12.1 to see if those bugs are resolved.
  

• The OAUG Fusion Council would be lost without James Hobbs. In fact, James is driving the council to deliver a surprise or two over the next few months...stay tuned!
  

• After releasing three Fusion CRM applications, the next increment of Fusion Applications will likely be a Fusion Applications GRC module.
  

• While some type of integrated Fusion Applications ERP suite will be released before the end of this calendar year, it likely won't be general available for quite some time thereafter. It will initially be provided only to selected customers with background in leading edge or early adoption; this probably rules out most public sector organizations. In addition, because manufacturing will not be included in the initial release, enterprises based on manufacturing will likely not be on the list of the first Fusion Apps companies.
  

• The user interface for Fusion Applications will bring about a huge improvement in the way people do their work...I can't overstate the impact here.
  

• Building a business process using the SOA Suite is actually much easier than I thought. I've been inspired to investigate the SOA Suite further.
  

• I'm really looking forward to this year's round of Oracle Excellence Awards. The use cases of customers extending Oracle Apps with Fusion Middleware have proven to be a rich source of great ideas for my own shop.
  

• If I made my living as a developer in the Oracle space, I'd make sure my skills were sharp in XML, Java and BPEL.
  

• The extension of Premier Support for EBS 11i gives those users more time to come up to speed with Fusion Middleware tools. It will be interesting to see how many take advantage of the opportunity.
  

• OAUG's Knowledge Factory has the makings of a great tool. I hope we'll see user uptake very quickly. I also hope we'll be able to partner up with the guys at Oracle Mix, with each environment consuming services from the other.
  

• Two days later, I still feel humbled and less than worthy about winning the OAUG President's Award. There are some many smart, dedicated, and hard-working people in OAUG...
  

• The toughest part of attending Collaborate is always heading back to the day job. You spend a week with people who understand the value the technology brings to the enterprise, and you see the incredibly creative things they're doing. By mid-week, you're elated just to be around these people and their ideas. Then the conference ends and it's back to the real world of administrative meetings, funding limitations and organizational hooey. well, Oracle OpenWorld is less than five months away...

Springtime In The Rockies - Thursday

It's getaway day for most attendees...Collaborate 08 is winding down today. Collaborate was a very different experience for me this year. I usually spend a great deal of my time at conferences networking and gathering information. This year, my schedule was so hectic that I just didn't have much chance to do any of that. My schedule was so packed that there were entire parts of the conference I never saw (the Exhibit Floor and the Relaxation Lounge come to mind) and people I never got to see (Tim Dexter, Judi Platz, and Sarah Wroble, among others) - so I leave feeling like I missed some things.

I tried to compensate by spending a good deal of my Thursday morning wandering through the Convention Center and gathering impressions from different attendees. Some consistent questions and concerns came out repeatedly:

• Most apps customers, regardless of the product line, don't see how the Application Integration Architecture fits into their apps.

• E-Business customers don't see the business value in upgrading to Release 12. In fact, most E-Business customers are not even aware that Oracle has upgraded to Release 12 for their own internal operations.

• Although customers are aware of BPEL now, Business Process Analysis has not gained much traction with them.

How will the anticipated acquisition of BEA impact the Fusion architecture?

Great flight home, but my checked bag was inspected by TSA again. They've checked my bag on every leg of every trip for the past two years. I must be on somebody's "hot list" of potential security threats. Next time I'm going to leave them a note...or maybe stuff my suitcase with those paper snakes that will jump out when they open the bag ;)

Springtime In The Rockies - Wednesday

Well, the calendar may say it's springtime but it sure doesn't feel like it. The weather turned on us today - cold and snowing.

Despite the change in the weather, it was a pretty spectacular day at Collaborate 08.

John Stouffer's "Technical Roadmap" session was outstanding. It's always interesting to get John's perspective on Oracle's future directions...he just lays it out like he sees it. An example of one of John's pearls of wisdom: as Oracle's Fusion architecture continues to evolve, developers may want to stop focusing on interfaces and start sharpening their XML, Java, and BPEL skills in order to stay relevant.

Steve Miranda gave very strong presentations both in his "Introduction to Fusion Applications" and as a member of the OAUG Fusion Council Panel. I was also a panel member in the latter session, but was really more like a Pip backing up Gladys Knight. It was also during this latter session that we learned that we should be looking for the first release of a Fusion GRC application module later this year.

Directly following Steve's session was Cliff Godwin's "Planning for The Future" presentation. I really enjoy Cliff's presentations. He always provides a great deal of great content and is very open in sharing information. I put Cliff in the same category as Steven Chan in this regard - they're my two favorite Oracle presenters.

In a pleasant suprise during OAUG's Meeting of the Members, I was presented with the first OAUG President's Award in appreciation for contributions to OAUG. There are some folks making significant and important contributions to the OAUG, and the Oracle community at large. I'm very honored to be counted among them. I'm grateful to the OAUG leadership, especially President Jan Wagner, for this award.

I also had a second opportunity to spend time with the Fusion User Experience team, providing more feedback on the user interface for the Fusion Applications Projects module. I'll say it again: great UI and great people building the UI. I really can't wait for users to see the new UI...it's a significant improvement in the way users will get their work done.

Spent a great evening with good friends in the biz. That's probably the best aspect of Collaborate...a chance to see good friends and pick their brains about recent developments in the Oracle space. At any rate, it was a great evening...I could share some great stories about the night, but some things are better left off the record. You'll have to come join us at Collaborate 09 if you want to know more.

More pictures here.

Springtime In The Rockies - Tuesday

Another great day at Collaborate 08...

I found the "Hands On Lab: Service-enable Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle SOA Suite BPEL Process Manager" to be a great session. Frankly, I wish we'd see more labs like this at Collaborate and Oracle OpenWorld. I actually built a fully-functioning business process from scratch using the BPEL Process Manager...yeah, I knew nobody would believe that a functional guy like me could do that in under two hours, so I took a picture.

My own session went pretty well: small crowd (about 25), which led to a great discussion. Hopefully, those who came found some value in what I shared.

Had a great face-to-face meeting of the OAUG Fusion Council. We have some big ideas in the works and new volunteers signing up to help us execute those ideas. Stay tuned!

The best part of my day was the time I spent with the Oracle User Experience folks. I had the opportunity to explore a semi-functional user interface prototype for the Fusion Application's Projects application module. The idea was that I would process some transactions and provide feedback on the UI...no clues (well, not many, anyway) from the Oracle team witnessing my work, I had to figure things out on my own. Now, I freely admit that my Projects skills are more than a little rusty and it took me a few minutes to shake that rust off. Once I got past that, I began to appreciate the Fusion Apps UI. The UI is very different from anything Oracle customers have ever seen before. Users will see much more information and functionality presented with very little navigation effort. The Oracle User Experience team has put significant effort into the UI design and it shows: The Fusion Applications UI is a "game changer". I think end users will be looking for somebody to thank for this stuff.

Working with the Oracle User Experience team was also a pleasure. Nice people, no pressure, and very accepting of both positive and negative feedback. If you ever have an opportunity to work with these people, take it. I get to participate in another User Experience session tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it.

More pics from today posted here.

Springtime In The Rockies - Monday

Everyone is complaining about the poor cell phone and WiFi service in the Denver Convention Center. Most cell phones are going into "brick mode" in many areas in the Center. For us ATT folks, it's especially ironic considering there is a huge ATT building right across the street. Not a strong endorsement for having a technology-oriented conference in Denver.

Highlights and announcements from Collaborate today...

The Oracle Fusion Middleware Product Strategy team announced the kickoff of the 2008 Oracle Excellence Awards. If you're doing innovative things with Fusion Middleware to extend Oracle Applications, this is your chance to shine.

Learned some interesting things during the E-Business Suite R12 Upgrade Panel session:

• Oracle's own upgrade to R12 took about 12 months from planning to "Go Live". Oracle's downtime for actually executing the production environment upgrade was a little over three days.
  

• Customers upgrading from 11i to R12 can typically plan on an increase in disk storage consumption of between 10 and 20 percent. Oracle's own disk storage increased from 12 terabytes to 13.1. However, on the up side, no additional CPU power was needed.
  

There are also more product announcements than I can track, including Oracle Universal Online Archive for archiving enterprise content, Oracle Email Archive Service, and Oracle Deal Management.

Posted some new pics from the conference, but the same rules still apply...no making fun of my photography.

Springtime In The Rockies - Sunday

Big doings on Sunday at Collaborate 08...

The big headline of the day involves Oracle's Lifetime Support policy for the E-Business Suite. During the OAUG Customer Support Council meeting, Oracle announced that the expiration of Premier Support for E-Business Suite 11.5.10 will be delayed from November 2009 to November 2010. It was also announced that the first year of Sustaining Support for 11.5.9 will include resolution of P1 bugs. 11.5.9 users in the U.S. will also receive 1099 support for the first year of Sustaining Support.

The workshop "Mapping Fusion Middleware Success: Case Studies That Lead the Way" was a huge success. In fact, the closing Q&A session went well over the time limit (they actually were chased out of the room).

The Oracle ACE dinner was also great. I'm still humbled by the opportunity to chat with so many great minds in one place.

I'm taking pictures at Collaborate...mostly because it gives me another excuse to work with my iPhone. You can check the pictures on Photobucket here. No making phone of my photography skills...I'm still getting used to the iPhone camera.

Springtime In The Rockies

Early tomorrow morning (no, I mean REALLY early tomorrow morning...like 6 a.m. takeoff early) I fly out for Collaborate 08 in Denver. I'm really looking forward to Collaborate this year. I'm double and triple booked about every waking moment, which is the sign of a really good conference. Should be great spending springtime in the Rockies...say, that's a really good title for daily updates from the conference: "Springtime In The Rockies - Day 1" kind of a thing. Yup, let's use that. I'll post some updates, take some pics, that sort of thing. If nothing else, it'll help justify my expense report when I get back, right?

On a more serious note, I just received word that Oracle President Charles Phillips plans to set aside a few minutes for Q&A during his keynote address on Monday evening. People can submit questions in advance, starting right now, via email at Opendoor_us@oracle.com. If you throw out a question but can't attend, let me know and I'll make it a point to relay back any answer given during the Q&A.

I'm looking forward to the unveiling of the OAUG Knowledge Factory on Wednesday. I've been a beta tester on this project and it's pretty nifty stuff. Sort of like Oracle Mix but not really the same thing. I see Mix as more of a collaboration and networking environment. Knowledge Factory is really focused on content: information about Oracle apps and technology. Both Mix and Knowledge Factory have their place (although it would be really cool to integrate the two someday). Mix has really ramped up nicely. I can't wait to see the Knowledge Factory take off.

Gonna be a great conference. Direct message me on Twitter (fteter) if you're there and let me know what you're doing.

Loose Coupling - A Spoonful of Sugar

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way
- From Mary Poppins’ “A Spoonful of Sugar”

When they were young, my daughters (and, to a lesser degree, my sons) were all big Mary Poppins fans. Now that they're older and starting to have children of her own, I see the tradition being passed to my grandchildren. One of the things that have become both a joke and tradition is the idea that a "spoonful of sugar" makes tough things easier.

I’ve heard quite a bit of rumbling in the Oracle Apps customer community lately about the cost and pain of upgrading to the Fusion Architecture. This rumbling is especially loud in the E-Business Suite customer community, as they’ll be compelled to abandon Oracle Workflow with the demise of Release 12 in a few years. The grumbling often runs along the lines protesting of the expense and effort of making the move without much value added other than generating more license and maintenance revenues for Oracle. Frankly, there is a large group of customers out there that don't see the benefit of taking the medicine.

Personally, I understand the “cost and pain” element for Oracle Workflow users who have built custom workflow processes. There is no clear upgrade or migration path for those customizations. There are things customers can do that may mitigate that cost and pain but, if a customer actually has no feasible options other than moving those custom workflow processes to the Fusion environment, it does look a bit rough as I write this article. Bluntly, this medicine may taste a little bitter.

The “cost and pain” considerations notwithstanding, I do think that the value add of Fusion Architecture will outweigh the cost of upgrading to that architecture: there are some spoonfuls of sugar to help this medicine go down. One example: the impact of loose coupling on future application upgrades.

Many of us have 3^rd-party or custom applications that we’ve “bolted on” to our Oracle Applications. Whether it’s because we need to preserve a certain business process, or our customers are persnickety about the user interface, or even just because grumpy old Mr. Potter doesn’t want to change things, most of us have some type of home-grown or 3rd-party app integrated into our ERP or CRM systems. When our apps change in the course of an upgrade (whether it’s Oracle’s apps or the bolt-on app), the change often constitutes taking a virtual sledge-hammer to the bolt-on interfaces.

Enter the loose coupling we get with Fusion Architecture. The idea behind loose coupling is to reduce the interdependencies between applications by utilizing industry-standard interfaces. The upshot here is most apparent in a point-to-point interface: so long as the integration points for each of the two apps remain unchanged and the interface between those points remains unchanged, changes in the applications on one side of the interface (form changes, database table revisions, that sort of thing) have no impact on the functionality or performance of the application on the other side of that point-to-point interface.

So in a loosely coupled environment, I won’t need to change my bolt-on application when upgrading my Oracle applications from one dot-release to the next so long as the interfaces between the two are loosely-coupled…which reduces the risk, complexity and effort associated with that particular upgrade. That sounds like a value add to me...it's a spoonful of sugar that I'll taste each time I go through an upgrade.

Now, before you run off thinking that we’re on the cusp of a bright and perfect world, I do need to add an important caveat. In leveraging Oracle’s APIs to construct loosely coupled interfaces with bolt-on apps, you’ll need to keep in mind Oracle’s design practices regarding those APIs. Rather than rehash some great work from another blogger, I simply refer you to Sanjit’s article on the subject at OracleApps Epicenter.

With loose coupling, I've pointed out only one small example of the value add opportunities Oracle applications customers will have after upgrading to Fusion Architecture. There are plenty of spoonfuls of sugar available in the Fusion Architcture that make the upgrade worthwhile, regardless of whether you’re using EBS, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, Retek, or even if you have your eye on Fusion Applications. Let me know what you think.

Important Collaborate 08 Updates

Two important updates on Collaborate 08:

• First, the scheduled date and time for my presentation has changed. I'll now be presenting "Case Study Update: A Roadmap To Fusion Applications" on Tuesday at 1:45 in Room 207.

• Second, Steve Miranda (Oracle's Sr. VP of Development for Fusion Applications) will be joining us for the Fusion Council Panel on Wednesday at 4:30 in Room 112. We'll be following the same pattern we used for the Fusion Council Panel session at Oracle OpenWorld 2007, so Steve will be addressing some questions from customers regarding Fusion Apps. If you have questions you'd like Steve to answer, email them to me before noon on Wed. April 2nd and I'll see what I can do to get those questions in front of him. However, if inspiration for a question does not strike you until after April 2nd, don't fret - I plan to Twitter from this particular session (you can follow me on Twitter at fteter), so you can hit me with a question on Twitter and, if the opportunity arises to present the question to Steve, I'll tweet his answer.

Time For A Change

It's time for a change
I'm tired of that same ol same
The same ol words the same ol lines
The same ol tricks and the same ol rhymes
--From Guy Clark's "Boats To Build"

Well, all of us reach a point where it's time for a change...and I'm personally at such a point right now. I've been getting a bit tired of the Oracle universe of late, just because there's nothing new left to learn. I need change and variety in my life, and this seems like a good time to shake things up a bit.

Effective this morning, I've resigned from my current job. And to top things off, I'm planning to withdraw from the Oracle world immediately and move on to something for which I have more passion.

I've noticed an absolute lack of individual accountability in today's rising generation. All this talk of teamwork, collaboration and transparency is just a smoke-screen for avoiding personal accountability. We're all missing out on the joy of performing menial work in a personal vacuum, with nothing more than a pencil, some ledger paper, and a 10-key - yup, those were the good old days of real discipline and rigor. I've had my fill of all this Twittering and Facebooking. What value is there in collaborating with other people to learn different approaches to similar problems, when everything in my company and my life is so unique? And networking? Gosh, I miss the days when my best networking tools were my Rolodex and a good old rotary phone on a party line (surely it's a form of networking when the neighbors listen in, right?). It's a shame that society didn't realize the descending path we were on with the first release of FidoNet or the advent of the dial-up modem! Google Maps on an iPhone? Bah! There's no better user experience than the solid heft of a Thomas Guide in your hands!

My new passion is to introduce discipline and conformity to the masses through the elimination of the technology-based tools that make this "social networking" slacking so prevalent. So, to further this cause, I've mortgaged my house to the hilt in order to fund the establishment of a world-wide virtual project: Special Leadership for the Uptake of Regulations by the People ("iSLURP"). Although I'll miss my interaction with all things Oracle, I hope I can count on your help in defeating the undisciplined concepts of social networking wherever they may be found. Support iSLURP! You can lend your support through our new Web...no, IM me at...no, see our wiki at...hold on, eh, join our new group at LinkedIn...uh, no, text me on...wait, that's no good either...just drive to my house and we'll talk.

Okay, enough of this drivel...you didn't really buy into any of this hooey, did you? Hope you all have a great April Fool's Day too!