Some Thoughts On OpenWorld

I wanted to hold off on the rush of "hot off the press" news about OpenWorld in the hopes of sharing my opinions after processing my thoughts for a few days. Needed to some time to get past the buzz of the show and the disappointment of parting with dear friends again. Also needed a few days to get over the embarrassment of not recognizing Latin on one of my presentation slides (forget the memory lapse…me, the lawyer, unable to recognize Latin…humiliating). So after a few days of processing time, here's what I think on the major highlights of the event:

Exadata

The Exadata machine is really cool to look at…great looking hardware with a pretty sexy light array. And the performance is beyond impressive. Fast, reliable, with enough power in a small configuration to run email for most of the world. But as an apps guy, it just doesn't excite me much. And, looking from the perspective of a small or medium size business, the cost is probably way out of my league. Maybe it will get more traction with SMB as a deployed system for hosting cloud-based services, but that remains to be seen. So the resurrection of big iron isn't really doing much for me personally.

Exalogic

OK, cloud-in-a-box (aka the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Clound) is pretty interesting from a pure geek point of view. Like the integration of WebLogic and Coherence on an Exadata hardware configuration. But when I get down to practicality for most of us…well, see my thoughts on Exadata.

Forkin' Linux

Interesting that Oracle has decided to take their own development fork on Linux (Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel). I really like the idea of a Linux distro specifically tailored for Oracle products. Can't wait to see the performance benchmarks here.

But, on the flip side, this also sounds like a step toward a proprietary distribution and a step away from open source. Yes, a Red Hat - based distro will continue to be offered by Oracle. Still worries me a bit. We'll see how it plays out.

E-Business Support

Rimini Street's announcement that they're entering the Oracle E-Business Support market was really interesting to me. First, I think competition is good for buyers…the value for your dollar spent typically increases during periods of competition. This probably won't be any different. Second, I'll be interesting to see how Rimini Street's model for EBS support unfolds in light of the fact that EBS is an Oracle "home grown" application product line.

Fusion Applications

The curtains were finally pulled back on Fusion Applications, with general availability planned for the first quarter of 2011. While both the OpenWorld keynotes short-changed Fusion Apps in terms of allotted time, the individual Fusion Apps sessions were packed with functional and technical information. In particular, the Financial, Project Portfolio Management and Human Capital Management suites are pretty appealing. A strong user experience, industry standards - based integration, and dissolution of the divide between transactions and business intelligence all make for a pretty powerful combination. I especially see significant opportunities for incremental uptake in parallel with other ERP applications.

I'll write more on the latter two subjects here once I recover from my usual post-OOW letdown. In the meantime, share your highlights…hit the comments.

OOW - Sunday

A big Sunday at what is shaping up to be a big OpenWorld…so big that Larry Ellison will gave a keynote this evening and plans another keynote for Wednesday. I had a little trouble keeping up with the stream of new announcements this evening, but a little help from my Twitter pals has kept me on track. Some of the highlights:

Cloud Computing

Oracle dove into the cloud computing business with a new hardware-software middleware machine branded the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud server. The new product scales to 30 6-core servers connected by Infiniband networking and is compatible with the Exadata Database Machine. In addition to the new product, Ellison announced the formation of a Cloud Services division. All in all, a pretty big turnaround for a guy who poo-poo'd the cloud computing concept as recently as two years ago.

Forkin' Linux

Oracle announced that it will distribute it's own Linux kernel, Unbreakable Enterprise Linux, in addition to continuing a Red Hat-compatible offering. The upshot here is optimizing OS performance for the Exalogic Elastic Cloud server mentioned above. So now Oracle customers will be able to choose between Oracle-branded Red Hat and Oracle's fork off the Red Hat kernel.

Fusion Applications

Ellison announced that the first release of Fusion Applications will generally available in the first quarter of 2011, with seven suites of 100 different products. Customers will be able to purchase individual products or a full suite. The lineup consists of Financials, Project Portfolio Management, Human Capital Management, Procurement, Customer Relationship Management, GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance), and Supply Chain Management (which includes the app getting my vote for the best acronym - Distributed Order Orchestration or "DOO").

We'll see much more of Fusion Apps throughout the conference, so ya'all will have another chance to see why I'm so excited about this product release.

More coming…this definitely will not be a dull week!

OOW - One More Thing

So as Oracle OpenWorld approaches, I'd like to point out one more session that may be worthy of your consideration.

For the first time, we'll see a track at OpenWorld directly positioned to Oracle Applications customers interested in leveraging Fusion Middleware ("FMW"). If you're considering extending your applications functionality with FMW, I'd recommend one session in particular:

Hasan Rizvi's General Session: Maximize the Value of Your Oracle Applications with Oracle Fusion Middleware. It's Tuesday at 12:30 in Room 102 of Moscone South.

Why do I think this session could be special? First, we'll hear how Nextel and Hologic are using FMW components with their Oracle Applications. Second, we'll see a mobile app demo that uses ADF Mobile with the E-Business Suite (this alone makes it worth attending in my book).

You may want to put this session on your calendar…

On The Eve Of OpenWorld...Upgrade!

On the eve of OpenWorld, it seems like we'll hear lots of exciting news.

Most of us in the ERP world are excited about seeing more details on Fusion Apps (even though the general release may not happen before year end). It's understandable, as the Fusion Apps will be a game-changer in the Oracle ERP space.

We'll also likely hear some announcements about some new products as well as an acquisition or two. Larry's keynote will be fun as always…and it'll also be interesting if we hear from Mark Hurd.

But, getting back to the ERP space, a huge impending milestone for E-Business users should not be lost in the bright lights of OOW: Premier Support for the terminal release of 11i (11.5.10.2) ends in November. From that point forward through 2013, 11.5.10.2 customers are on Extended Support. While Extended Support ain't so bad in and of itself (unless you count on certifications with new product releases - and most of us do, given the rate of change in technology today), it may serve you well to keep a close eye on Oracle's Mandatory Minimum Patch Baseline.

The Minimum Patch Baseline consists of those patches that you must…repeat: must…apply in order to qualify for Extended Support. The baseline is also required in order to upgrade, either to R12.1.3 or Fusion Apps. You can keep an eye on Mandatory Minimum Patch Baseline, which is frequently updated, via My Oracle Support Note 883202.1. I suspect that the longer you stay on 11.5.10.2, the more patches you'll see in the Mandatory Minimum Patch Baseline.

So, with all that in mind, my opinion? If I were an 11i customer, I'd spend some serious time at OpenWorld focusing on gathering information for an upgrade to R12. It's time to get on with your upgrade if you haven't done so already. A few reasons for my opinion:

• The longer you wait to upgrade once Premier Support ends, the more complex the upgrade will become. Oracle will continue to produce new releases of R12, with new technology and new features…the further behind you fall, the tougher it gets to catch up.

• If you have your eye on upgrading to a later release of Fusion Apps, keep in mind an important point: 11.5.10.2 is a support "jump off point" for Fusion Apps version 1.0. No promise has been made regarding 11.5.10.2 and later versions of Fusion Apps.

• We're starting to see more and more Oracle middleware technology move from OC4J to WebLogic. Sooner or later, it will likely happen for the E-Business Suite as well. Do you really want to roll a move to WebCenter into your EBS upgrade?

• On the upside, R12 has introduced some valuable features. Subledger Accounting, more APIs for increased integration opportunities, and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) all come to mind. Having a few recent R12 projects under my belt, I can really see the business value…it's worth looking at.

So, yeah, on the eve of OpenWorld I'm suggesting you 11i customers spend your time at the conference checking out your upgrade options. It's time.

So Many Moving Parts

I recently received a pretty cool little gift in the mail from MIchael Stewart at Red River Solutions. Seems he's teamed up with my pal John Stouffer to produce a new book: Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i & 12 Apps DBA 101. Nice of the guys to send me a copy.

After spending a few hours reading through the book and checking out some of the references, I suspect it will spend more time in the field with me than on my bookshelf.

The premise of the book is that, with the E-Business Suite, there are so many moving parts. Despite covering all those moving parts, It's a quick read, coming in at 105 pages. But it's chock full of references (Oracle Support notes, blog urls, ideas and lessons learned by experience. The book is a pretty powerful reference work for an Apps DBA managing an Oracle E-Business Suite environment.

Keep an eye out for the book at OpenWorld this year. Highly recommended reading.