Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Fusion Applications - Laying It Out

A friend recently made a request for some info on Fusion Applications.  After I finished providing some info and answering some basic questions, the idea came up that I should just lay this stuff out for everybody…so, in the words of Hannibal Lechter: "Okey dokey, here we go."

Installation Options


A few thoughts on installation options
  • Unless you have a really, really, really compelling business reason, you won't want to take the "Bring Your Own Hardware" installation approach.  Fusion Applications requires loads of hardware investment.  It's a big footprint.
  • Personally, I would not recommend running a Private Cloud on your own.  In addition to the hardware required, you'll also need a devops team with a wide and varied set of skills.  Oracle, HP, AT&T, and many others will happily set up and maintain a private cloud for you.  Explore the vendor option before you set off down this path.
  • For those requiring integration with 3rd-party or home-grown applications, I like the Hosted option best.  No maintenance headaches with the hosted applications and integration is very easy.  However, I do worry about maintenance response times from Oracle OnDemand and other hosting providers - significant improvement needed here.
  • I like the SaaS option due to lower entry and maintenance costs, especially if your customization and integration demands are very light.  However, SaaS does struggle if you need significant levels of data integration or complex customizations.

Deployment Options


This is a very simple perspective on deployment options.  There are nuances and options within options and all sorts of things to consider, but this simple table has served me well.  Helps me keep things in perspective.  Hope it helps you too.

So, in very simple and brief terms, I've laid it out.  Hope you get something out of this.  Questions? Criticism? Additional thoughts or experiences?  Comments encouraged.

8 comments:

Frank Scavo said...

Floyd, this is a very informative post in very brief format. Thank you.

A couple questions: you express concern about "maintenance response time" from Oracle On-Demand and other hosting providers. Are you referring to response time to apply Oracle patches? Or, application response time? Either way, why wouldn't there be similar problems with what Oracle calls the SaaS option?

fteter said...

@Frank: Thanks for the kind comments.

When I talk about "maintenance response time", I'm talking about response time to apply patches, resolve service requests, etc.

In Oracle's particular case, I'm not hearing or experiencing the challenge with response times in SaaS that I'm aware of with OnDemand. It seems as though the internal practices are a bit different.

Unknown said...

Regarding coexistence I hear the new File Based Loader is the way to go. It's Python driven rather than ODI and allows deltas processing rather than a send everything approach.

fteter said...

@Michael: I have not had the opportunity to check out the new File Based Loader yet. But it just jumped to the top of my priority list. I sure hope you're right! Thanks for the tip!

Unknown said...

hi floyd,
if i want install fusion applications at home for my learning , do i need any license for this ?
can u please help on h/w requirements to start with ?

Regards,
narayana

fteter said...

Hi Narayana,

You won't want try this at home. Too much hardware required. Think about AWS. Ping me by email and I can lay out some details for you.

You can grab Fusion Apps from eDelivery...but you will need a license if you're planning on ever using any component in a production environment.

Unknown said...

Hi floyd, thanks for the response.
i dont have your email id, i checked your profile and i cant find it. can you please provide me or send an test mail to dvvnreddy@gmail.com (extremely sorry for asking this,but i need ur advice on fusion apps installation @home).
thanks
narayana

fteter said...

@Unknown: Unless you have a lots of computing processing power and a really nifty disk array laying around, you won't be doing this at home. Think AWS.