More Thoughts On OOW

Oracle OpenWorld 2008 will offer me a perspective I have missed out on for a long time - that of someone "just attending" ("just attending" is a phrase that's always bothered me - without the folks "just attending", there is no conference). Granted, I'll be highly engaged while attending, but I'm "just attending": no presentations, no panels, no nothing...strictly an audience member. This is a perspective I have not experienced in several years and, to be honest, it's really cool.

I don't miss the pressure of building presentations and keeping them current in the weeks leading up to OOW. I also like the independence and schedule flexibility. Finally, I like being able to focus on those things that will allow me to be a "highly engaged" attendee and add value to the Oracle user community in new ways during the conference. One example of this: I'm writing this post from my iPhone, using LifeCast - be a nice way to blog in real time (other than Twitter) if this little test is successful.

So my goal for this OOW, other than learning about the important subjects mentioned in my last post, is to fire up real-time discussions during OOW. The mix of the blogger and Oracle Ace credentials Oracle was kind enough to pass my way (thanks Justin) with some nifty social networking technology may allow us all to be "highly engaged" this year. I can't wait!

Posted with LifeCast

What Looks Good To Me - Oracle OpenWorld 2008

I've recently been reading lots of articles on various blogs about planning for Oracle OpenWorld 2008. Looking at my calendar, I realized OOW is coming up fast...which means I need to get off my ample posterior and post my "What Looks Good To Me" article for this conference. So this be that. May I begin by sharing a couple of thoughts for your consideration?

First, the sessions that appeal to me relate directly to what I hope to get from OOW this year. The conference has become so large that my best approach for getting maximum value is to determine a few subject areas that are important to me, then consider sessions only in those subject areas (yes, I sometimes miss the old AppsWorld days in San Diego, where the conference was small enough that anyone could just float from session to session and see what looked interesting). Your important subject areas could be different than mine, so different OOW sessions may look better to you. My important subject areas this year are:

• Getting updated information on the strategic direction of Fusion Applications

• Learning about about creative customer use cases on extending the E-Business Suite with Fusion Middleware

• As a customer using only the Oracle E-Business Suite, determining whether the Application Integration Architecture really holds any value for me

• Gathering info on the Identity Management product suite (I'm currently the project manager for an identity management-type of project, so I'd like to see if Oracle offers any potential solutions)

• Getting deeper into Web 2.0 and Composite Apps (I suspect that a composite UI will be a large part of the solution for that identity management-type project)

• Getting updated on new features with Oracle Support, as keeping Oracle products running at my shop is a significant part of my job
  

Second, I've made no attempt to resolve schedule conflicts between two or more good sessions. Hey, one of the signs of a good conference is being forced to make difficult choices about how to spend your time.

Third, as always, I've limited this article to session presentation available for Full Conference Pass attendees. Not doing the Developer sessions this year, so I can't comment on those. The "Sunday SIG" sessions still seem a little unsettled as of this writing, so I've opted not to include those. Nor am I sharing here where I'll be or what I'll be doing in the evenings. Follow me on Twitter (fteter) if you want to track me down.

Fourth, from an apps perspective, I'm strictly an E-Business customer. I can't comment on sessions important to users of PeopleSoft, JDE, Siebel, Retek, or other product lines under the Applications Unlimited umbrella.

Fifth, a little housekeeping regarding the format for the list. I've broken the sessions out by my important subject areas. Other than that, the listing is in no particular order. The listing format is Session Id, Session Title, Presenter (Company Name). You can look up the location, date and time for any session by Session ID on this year's OOW Schedule Builder.

Okie-dokie, here we go now with what looks good to me...

Fusion Applications and Fusion Middleware

• S299488, Roadmap for Oracle Fusion Middleware Application Server Infrastructure, Will Lyons (Oracle) and Mike Lehmann (Oracle)

• S298374, 10 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for Oracle Fusion Applications, Nadia Bendjedou (Oracle) and Debra Lilley (United Kingdom Oracle User Group)

• S298383, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as Part of an Application Upgrade Strategy, Nadia Bendjedou (Oracle), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology), and Markus Zirn (Oracle)

• S298467, Oracle Fusion Applications: Applications for the Next-Generation Organization, Part 1, Steve Miranda (Oracle)

• S298494, Oracle Fusion Applications: Applications for the Next-Generation Organization, Part 2, Chris Leone (Oracle)

• S300260, City of Las Vegas: A Case Study Using Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology) and Pat Dues (City of Las Vegas)

• S300271, Extending BI Dashboards with Oracle's BI Portfolio in a Heterogeneous ERP Environment, Michael Rulf (USi)

• S298463, What's New with Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher: The Standard Reporting Platform for All Applications, Tim Dexter (Oracle)

Web 2.0 and Composite Applications

• S299162, Web 2.0 Technologies in the Enterprise: Lessons Learned, Tips, and Tricks from Oracle AppsLab, Paul Pedrazzi (Oracle)

• S299672, Composite Applications: The New Face of Oracle Applications Integration Architecture, Munazza Bukhari (Oracle)

• S299480, Build Composite Applications Your End Users Will Actually Use, George Maggessy (Oracle) and Maiko Rocha (Oracle)
  

Support

• S299729, Harness the Power of Oracle Diagnostics with Oracle E-Business Suite Support Tools, David Warhoe (Oracle) and Hiran Patel (Oracle)

• S299730, Best Practice Tips for Your Upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, Chris Warticki (Oracle) and Michele Corvino (Oracle)

Identity Management

• S300245, Oracle Identity Management: Making the Most of Your Oracle Human Resources Data, Niklas Iveslatt (Arisant) and Jenny McGurk (Douglas County Public Schools)

• S298922, Identity Management for Oracle E-Business Suite, Stephen Lee (Oracle)

• S298924, Recent Trends and Standards in Identity Management, Uppili Srinivasan (Oracle) and Prateek Mishra (Oracle)

• S298195, Implementing Identity Management for External Users at AARP, Craig Williams (Oracle) and Vikas Mahajan (AARP)

Applications Integration Architecture

• S299685, Bridging the Oracle Applications Unlimited/Oracle Fusion Applications Gap with Oracle Applications Integration Architecture, Julie Butterfield (Oracle) and Michael Seymour (Oracle)
  

• S299692, Oracle Application Integration Architecture for Oracle E-Business Suite, Rimita Bewtra (Oracle) and Rajesh Devakumar (Oracle)
  

• S298472, Leveraging Oracle Application Integration Architecture Foundation Pack to Build a Best-of-Breed E-Commerce Landscape, Michael Rulf (USi) and Nadia Bendjedou (Oracle)

E-Business Suite

• S299521, Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Strategy and General Manager Update, Cliff Godwin (Oracle)

• S298375, Upgrade to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12: Get Your Technical and Functional Questions Answered by This Panel, Nira Mitra (Oracle), John Stouffer (Triora Group), Sandra Vucinic (VLAD Group), and Farrell Bullock (Oracle)

• S299990, Oracle Running Oracle, Bret Fuller (Oracle)

• S298388, Using Oracle Application Server 10g with Oracle E-Business Suite, Steven Chan (Oracle)

• S298389, Advanced Deployment Architectures for Oracle E-Business Suite, Steven Chan (Oracle) and Ivo Dujmovic (Oracle)

• S299953, Extending Oracle E-Business Suite with the Hyperion Acquisition, Andy Seferta (Fujitsu) and Debra Lilley (Fujitsu)

Well, there ya go...I'm hoping that sharing my thoughts might help someone else have a richer OOW experience. Now that you know what I'm thinking, let me know what you're thinking by leaving a comment.

On The Horns Of A Dilemma

When the concept of Fusion Applications was initially announced, I was pretty excited about the applicability of those apps in my shop. The idea of industry-standard integration across organizations and technology stacks, coupled with a Web 2.0-like user interface, really hit home with some needs I saw looming on the horizon.

Almost three years later, I'm still excited about Fusion Applications. However, I do have a little problem: I'm now face-to-face with those needs that were looming on the horizon a few years ago. The need for integration is especially urgent right now in my shop. Unfortunately, those needs arrived more quickly than Fusion Applications.

The good news here is that I can address the integration issues immediately at hand by extending the E-Business Suite with Fusion Middleware. The bad news is that, if Fusion Middleware addresses the integration issues adequately, the Web 2.0-like UI alone may not be enough of a value-add to justify making the move to Fusion Applications. If I knew more about Fusion Applications, the "bad news" element could be mitigated by emphasizing additional value...but I don't know enough about Fusion Applications to make that argument anytime soon. So, due to a timing problem between the appearance of my integration issues and the release of information about Fusion Applications, I'm worried about losing the nifty UI flexibility that will provide noticeable benefit to my end-users (and create a truck-load of customer satisfaction to boot).

Now, don't take this post as a rant over Oracle's secrecy regarding Fusion Applications. Far from it: I understand the legal and strategic reasons driving the lack of information. I'm just pointing out that the lack of info has become a fairly significant (as in losing sleep over it) problem for at least one customer...me.

Anyone else stuck on the horns of a similar dilemma, or am I all alone on this one?

PSOUG

So I did spend Thursday hanging with the folks at PSOUG for the first day of "Oracle Days". My take is that PSOUG is driving the beginning of something special. They're beginning to build up some traction with the Oracle user community in the Pacific Northwest. While I'm primarily an apps and apps technology guy, and Oracle Days seemed to draw more of a database and developer crowd, even I could see the momentum building. The Pacific Northwest is more than a little geographically isolated from an Oracle community perspective - it's good to see a regional community coming together. If you missed Oracle Days this year, be sure to make it next time...there's good stuff coming together.

On a more personal note, Seattle is a beautiful city. This was my first trip there, but I'm thinking I may go back for a few days later this summer. If I do, however, it's a pretty safe bet I won't fly Alaska Airlines again. This trip was my first with Alaska. On the return, I got lazy and checked my brand-new American Tourister bag - bad move. You can see what Alaska did to my bag here, here, and here. Some of the contents were also damaged - pics here and here. Still waiting to hear from Alaska about any type of consideration for the damage.

One last note on the flying experience. For some reason, any bag I check been searched on every trip I've taken since 9/11. Funny how I'm cleared to work on NASA projects, but I seems to be on some type of hot list with the TSA...think I may pack some of those paper pop-up snakes in my bag for my flight to OpenWorld this year, just to see what happens ;)

An Exciting Week

A couple of occurrences over the past two days have really made my week.

I took a call from an old friend at Oracle yesterday. I've accepted the opportunity to serve as a judge for the Oracle Excellence Awards again this year. The awards are given to Oracle customers and partners who are creatively using Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle Applications (E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards etc) to create innovative and standards-based technology solutions. I'm honored to be a judge and excited about the change to learn of the creative ways that apps customers and partners are leveraging Fusion Middleware. If you're doing something nifty along these lines in your own shop, tell us about it; you might win an award! Nominations are open until August 8th.

I'm also off to Seattle, presenting on the first day of Oracle Days, a conference hosted by the Puget Sound Oracle Users Group. I'm pretty excited about this event. I really enjoy the exchange of ideas that takes place at a good conference. In addition, I've never had the chance to hang with the PSOUG folks before. Wish I could stay longer than a day, but a day is better than nothing. Be sure to swing by and say hello if you happen to be attending the conference.

Yup, it's an exciting week...

I'm A Little Torn

Oracle recently shared their roadmap for the technology obtained as part of the BEA acquisition. I held off on writing about this for a bit, trying to figure out exactly what I think about this latest news. However, as I write this, I'm still a little torn about the latest news on the evolution of Fusion Middleware.

I really like the continuing evolution of Fusion Middleware as Oracle acquires new companies and technologies. Some of the more prominent examples from the BEA acquisition that relate to Fusion Middleware:

• I like the selection of WebLogic as the "...strategic J2EE container". I've been a fan of WebLogic's enhanced functionality for some time, even though my own experience is that implementation is a bit more difficult than bringing up and using OC4J.
  

• Utilizing the AquaLogic Enterprise Service Bus over Oracle's old ESB is definitely a step up.
  

• I'm also excited about the change control capabilities gained by utilizing AquaLogic Enterprise Repository as the SOA Governance Repository.
  

I hear rumors that the 11g Apps Server will be out late 2009 or early 2010, and that it will include the new BEA components. That's exciting stuff and I can't wait to get my hands on it.

So, if I like this stuff, why am I torn in my thinking about it? It comes down to money. In my shop, we've been told that we'll need to relicense the BEA components as we move down the Fusion Middleware path. I'm a little frustrated that, as my IT budget continues to shrink (but the work doesn't), I'll be paying relicensing fees in order to stay current. I'm also a little disappointed that there is no "grandfathering" consideration for those customers on the pre-BEA Oracle components (OC4J, Oracle ESB, etc.). Now, this is all relatively new information...could be I've got it all wrong. In fact, I hope I'm wrong here (please feel free to correct me if I am) or that the policy will change in the near future.

So, I'm a little torn. While I think the evolutionary approach of integrating acquired technology to improve existing products is a great thing, I'm more than a little disappointed that many existing Oracle customers will need to relicense just to stay current.

Any thoughts? Leave a comment.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/01/Oracle-reveals-BEA-roadmap_1.html