Deja Vu in Higher Education

And I feel like I've been here before
Feel like I've been here before
                  --From "Deja Vu" by Crosby, Stills & Nash

As I write this, I'm sitting in my hotel room resting up from another day at Alliance.  Sore feet, sore back, great conference.  I'm also having a Deja Vu experience:  Oracle made some product announcements here that hearken back to the early days of Fusion Applications (aka Oracle Cloud Application Services).

So, as you're probably heard, Oracle announced three new products directed specifically at the Higher Education marketplace:

• Campus Solutions 9.2:  This new release of Campus Solutions, an upgrade from 9.0, rolls up of all the feature packs from 9.0.  It will also include the yet-to-be-released PeopleTools 8.54 and the PeopleSoft Upgrade Manager ("PUM").  The UI looks for similar to Simplified UI, but it's built on PeopleTools rather than ADF.
• Student Cloud:  The first release will include services for continuing education, with later releases including functionality yet to be revealed.  The UI is Oracle's Simplified UI (which makes it pretty cool in and of itself).
• Higher Education Cloud:  This will be a group of new features for Higher Education in Oracle's ERP and HCM clouds.  The features announced include Grants Management, Budgetary Control, Encumbrance Accounting (all in the ERP Cloud), Position Control Multiple Appointments and Collective Bargaining Agreements (in the HCM Cloud).

Some of the important points to remember in all of this:

• These are not "either or" offerings.  The intent is to offer customers freedom of choice...including the ability to "mix and match".  For example, CS customers will be able to utilize features of the Higher Education Cloud to add value quickly, without additional infrastructure investment.
• All the Oracle offerings in the Higher Education space will continue to evolve.  All three products will grow and develop according to the needs voiced by Higher Education customers.
• For those worried about Oracle's commitment to the PeopleSoft and Campus Solutions products, my advice is to stop worrying.  This announcement represents a higher level of commitment to those products, not a death knell.

Now about that feeling of Deja Vu.  For those of you who recall the evolution of Fusion Applications, all this sounds mighty familiar...with one important exception.  Those in the Oracle ecosystem learned and improved quite a bit in the evolution Cloud Application Services up to this point.  Higher Ed customers will benefit from all that learning and improvement as the Oracle brings the opportunities of choice to the higher education space.

Campus Solutions 9.2, Student Cloud, Higher Education Cloud - this is going to be one fun ride...again.