Tech and Social Isolation

We're living through some uncertain times these days.  I keep trying to draw historical parallels in the hope of finding some pearls of wisdom for dealing with COVID-19...

As a very young boy, I can remember stories from my grandparents about living through the Spanish Flu epidemic from 1918 to 1920.  And I can’t help but draw parallels with today’s COVID-19 pandemic, especially the social isolation required to combat the spread of both viruses.  But I also contemplate the one huge difference:  today’s ability to use technology to keep work going, help others and to keep in contact with those we care about.  Some examples:

• Even with three-quarters of the world’s population under shelter-at-home directives, we’re still able to deliver Office Hours for Responsive UX to audiences averaging roughly 200 attendees. Even better, many Oracle customers are making the switch while their entire workforce is working remotely.
• My wife is building and donating effective respiratory masks.  After researching the material 3M uses to make their N95 masks, Marlene developed a mask pattern for full facial respiratory masks.  She cuts the masks (made entirely out of the N95 filter material) on her Silhouette Cameo 4 (a programmable material cutter) in bulk and then sews on the elastic straps.  She has provided masks to family, friends, health-care providers, law enforcement and local hospitals.  And she has also provided kits with cut material, elastic bands, and instructions for those who can sew. 
• A close friend's family celebrates Easter, typically by gathering for an Easter feast.  This year, they all cooked at home and gathered via Google Duo for a virtual family feast.  A gathering made possible by technology.

I’m not sure how those folks back in 1918 survived the separation with their sanity, but I am certainly grateful for the blessings technology brings in the face of today’s social distancing!

Tell us how you're using tech to keep things going while sheltering in place.  The comments await!

New Admin Pages

As you all know, I've been deep into the new mobile responsive Newsfeed UX for Oracle HCM Cloud since last year.  And, like most everything else in a continuous service delivery model, new features and functionality have been rolling out incremental with each new update.  And the latest update, 19C, continues that trend.

One of the big changes in 19C is the uplift of administrative pages (aka professional landing pages) to the Newsfeed UX look and feel.  It's coming to all users, regardless of whether you're still using the classic Simplified User Interface or the new mobile responsive Newsfeed UX.  For customers still on the classic UI, this provides an opportunity to dip your toes in the water with Newsfeed UX without any configuration effort.  For those customers already on Newsfeed UX, this makes the look and feel of the administrative pages consistent with all the other pages.

Here is a before and after screen shot example so you can get a feel for what I'm talking about:

Before

After

Personally, I've found that the Search feature at the top of the page in the new layout is really handy.  I don't need to scroll or try other navigation - just search for what I need.  Nice cool factor for ease of use.

This brings me to a really important point:  if you are an Oracle HCM Cloud customer who has not switched to mobile responsive Newsfeed UX, I have to ask why not?  It is Oracle's strategic direction going forward - we're releasing more and more new functionality that ties into Newsfeed UX.  So the longer you wait, the further behind you fall on benefiting from that new functionality.  Is that really where you want to be, burping and chirping behind the curve while the rest of your industry grabs the gains of those new features?  Just a thought... you can always sound off with your own perspective in the comments.

Knowing Your Cloud From Your SaaS

I have recently spent far too much time in far too many conversations in which the terms "cloud" and "SaaS" are used interchangeably.  Let's be clear:  the two terms are not interchangeable as they describe very different concepts.

Cloud.  There are many definitions out there.  Marketers and sales people.  Engineers.  Industry analysts. The National Institute of Standard and Technology.  Frankly, most of those definitions are either wrong, or they're technically accurate while thoroughly useless.  So let's go with a simple definition: a computer in a different physical location attached to a network.  It's about physical architecture.  Think about it.  Play with it.  Hit the comments if you have a better definition.

SaaS.  Acronym for "Software as a Service".  Same set of folks attempting to define this idea with the same set of sad results.  Try this on for size:  Applications accessed via a browser, licensed on a subscription basis and delivered via Cloud.

So it's very possible to have Cloud (think hosting operations) without having SaaS.  But there is no SaaS without Cloud.  SaaS is a subset of Cloud.

In "Oracle speak", Fusion Applications (including Taleo), are SaaS.  As a customer, I could also opt to have my licensed E-Business, PeopleSoft, or JD Edwards applications on the cloud...but that is not SaaS, as those applications are not offered on a subscription basis.

So there ya go.  Simple set of definitions.  Yes, there are more nuances if you dig into the subject.  But this is a simple foundation to start.  If nothing else, the next time you're involved in a conversation, you can use this to know your Cloud from your SaaS...which will put you way ahead of the curve ;)

Pareto Rocks!

I'm a big fan of Vifredo Pareto's work.  He observed the world around him and developed some very simple concepts to explain what he observed.  Pareto was ahead of his time.

Some of Dr. Pareto's work is based on the Pareto Principle:  the idea that 80% of effects come from 20% of causes.  In the real world, we continually see examples of the Pareto Principle.

I've been conducting one of my informal surveys lately...talking to lots of partners, customers and industry analysts about their experiences in implementing SaaS and the way it fits their business.  And I've found that, almost unanimously, the experience falls in line with the Pareto Principle.  Some sources vary the numbers a bit, but it generally plays out as follows:

• Using the same SaaS footprint, 60% of any SaaS configuration is the same across all industries.  The configuration values and the data values may be different, but the overall scheme is the same.
• Add another 20% for SaaS customers within the same vertical (healthcare, retail, higher education, public sector, etc.)..
• Only about 20% of the configuration, business processes, and reporting/business intelligence is unique for the same SaaS footprint in the same industry sector between one customer and another.

Many of the customers I've spoken to in this context immediately place the qualifier: "but our business is different."  And they're right. In fact, for the sake of profitability and survival, their business must be different.  Every business needs differentiators.  But it's different within the scope of that 20% mentioned above.  That other 80% is common with everyone in their business sector.  And, when questioned, most customers agree with that idea.

This is what makes the business processes baked into SaaS so important; any business wants to burn their calories of effort on the differentiators rather than the processes that simply represent "the cost of being in business."  SaaS offers the opportunity to standardize the common 80%, allowing customers to focus their efforts on the unique 20%.  Pareto had it right.

Integration Is Hard

If you know me at all, you know I love services-based integration.  The whole idea of interfacing, moving and exchanging data, guided by industry standards...I'm an enthusiastic supporter.  The appeal of this idea made me an ardent supporter of Oracle's Fusion Applications.  And I still believe it's an important part of the potential for today's SaaS offerings.

So I'll share a secret with you...I really hate services-based integration.  It's hard.  Packaged integrations rarely work out of the box.  SaaS integrations are tough to implement.  Integration platforms are still in their infancy.  Data errors are frequent problems.  Documentation is either inaccurate or non-existent.  Building your own - oy!  Even simple integrations require large investments of blood, sweat, and tears.  And orchestrating service integrations into a business process...agony on a stick.  I personally believe that the toughest aspect of enterprise software is services integration.  SaaS, hybrid, on-premise, packaged applications, middleware...it does not matter, services integration is hard regardless of context.

I see SaaS integration as "hero ground":  there is nowhere to go but up, and even simple wins will create heroes.  Service integrations that really work, simple and easily understood documentation, design patterns, data templates and useable tools... I think we have a ton of work to do.  Because, even though it shouldn't be, integration is hard.

Nashville Cat

Nashville cats, play clean as country water
Nashville cats, play wild as mountain dew
Nashville cats, been playin' since they's babies
Nashville cats, get work before they're two
            - From the Lovin' Spoonful's Nashville Cats

I'm heading out to HEUG's Alliance this weekend.  Gonna be a Nashville Cat for a few days.  My big job is to host three workshop/demo sessions on Oracle Cloud Applications, all in Room Delta Island C at the Gaylord Hotel:

1.    Taleo Cloud Demo: Tuesday, March 17 12 noon-1 p.m.

2.     Financials Cloud Demo: Tuesday March 17, 2:00-3:00 p.m.

3.     HCM Cloud Demo: Wednesday, March 18, 7:45-8:45 a.m.

Almost everything will be "live drive", so you'll get some relief fromPowerPoint slides ;)  These are sponsored sessions (Thank you, Sierra Cedar), so you won't find them on the Alliance schedule.  Some of those special conference sessions that only get heard about by word of mouth or from some big-mouth blogger.

You want the straight scoop on Oracle's Cloud Applications, do come by so we can chat for a bit.

I'll also be in some private customers sessions, attending a few sessions, shaking hands and kissing babies.  So if you really have to miss all the workshops, track me down so we can talk.

Treasures From The Road

Reading departure signs in some big airport

Reminds me of the places I've been.

Visions of good times that brought so much pleasure

Makes me want to go back again.

If it suddenly ended tomorrow,

I could somehow adjust to the fall.

Good times and riches and son of a b*****s,

I've seen more than I can recall

                      — From Jimmy Buffett’s "Changes in Lattitude, Changes in Attitude"

I’ve been traveling lately.  In fact, since OpenWorld this year, I’ve been on the road around 75% of my time.  All in the continental USA.  From my viewpoint, that’s lots of travel.  But it’s been good - full of variety, working with lots of customers and partners.  Mobile, SaaS applications, BI, UX (including conducting an Oracle HCM UX workshop for Oracle Partners), keynoting at the East Coast Oracle conference (just got the feedback on my talk, and I’m really pleased with it).  I’m not complaining.  Now that I’m done for this calendar year, I have a chance to reflect on the treasures I’ve learned lately.

A really cool thing in all that travel has been talking and working with many of Oracle’s Higher Education customers.  I’m still getting to know that market, so it’s been an enriching experience.  And I’ve gathered some questions posed, observations collected, and commentary about Oracle Cloud Applications that seems to be pretty consistent across those Higher Education users. In fact, they seem pretty consistent in general.  So I thought I’d share them, along with my own thoughts about each, and see what y’all think.

1.  Comment:  My institution/enterprise/organization/firm really needs to get out from under the maintenance costs of our Oracle applications.  We’re continually burning resources with patching and upgrading.  We’re on a very expensive treadmill.  

My Response:  Software-as-a-Service was made for customers like you. With SaaS, Oracle works the patching and upgrading (on your schedule, by the way).  So your resources are now liberated from operational maintenance to work on projects and tasks related to your core mission, whatever that might be.

2.  Comment:  We have unique needs/customers/business processes and we can’t customize in the cloud.  

My Response:  Keep the things that differentiate you or make you unique on-premise.  Take the things that are necessary to do business, but aren’t part of your core mission, and move them into SaaS.  This allows you to stay unique at your core, but gives the operational headaches of the necessary but mundane things to someone else.  This approach is known as a “Hybrid” or “Co-Existence” deployment.  

Optional “Add-On” Response:  Best-practice business processes are baked into the cloud applications.  This is one of the unsung value-adds in SaaS.  It may be worthwhile to take a look at those best-practice business processes and consider whether they might work for you.

3.  Comment:  I’m worried about security in putting sensitive data out on the cloud.  

My Answer comes in two parts:  A) Is data security part of your core business?  It is part of Oracle’s core business.  As a result, they hire platoons of the best “A-Team” security experts to fend off thousands of attacks every day.  So perhaps your data might actually be better protected in the cloud than it is today?  B) Did you know that Oracle does not commingle customer data?  The data of every SaaS customer is physically and virtually separated from every other SaaS customer.  So, in terms of data separation, you won’t sacrifice anything by moving to the cloud.

4.  Observation:  The position of UX in the applications market has changed dramatically over the past year.  

Rather than being an optional value-add, UX is now a basic requirement for a seat at the table.  Ugly, complicated applications just don’t sell anymore.  Basic, packaged applications must meet the standards of elegant, consistent user interfaces and simple paths to results  just to enter the market.  And end users now expect custom, home-grown applications to meet those same standards.  If you can’t punch your UX ticket, you just can’t play…period.

5.  Question:  What’s the difference between Workday and Oracle Cloud Application Services?  

NOTE:  I knew this one would get your attention.  We're playing with fire now ;)

My Response:  I have a great deal of respect for what Workday is doing.  They’re designing and building elegant, clean, simple applications that have turned the entire enterprise applications market on its head.  I’m a fan.  That being said, I think Oracle has a differentiator with a deeper and richer set of features…you’ll find standard features that only exist in Oracle’s cloud applications.  That’s important because it allows Oracle to address a wider and more complex range of use cases and business processes.  There are other factors for and against both Workday and Oracle.  But, in my mind, that’s the big difference.

So those are the big treasures from my recent travels.  Thoughts? Feedback?  Comments please.

Good UX - Don't Leave Home Without It

There was a time when I asserted that User Experience would be a differentiator for Oracle in selling Fusion Applications.  Lots has changed since then, so I think it’s time to change my own thinking.  What’s changed?

• Oracle has a cloud platform

• Fusion Applications is now Cloud Application Services

• We’re seeing well-designed user experiences throughout Oracle’s offerings: Simplified UI in moving into the Applications Unlimited products, and is also evident throughout Oracle’s cloud services offerings.

• Other enterprise application software companies now see the value of a well-designed user experience.  Look at the transition at Infor.  Check ADP’s announcement from earlier today.  Even the brand-W company that cannot be named recently released software that is a straight clone of Oracle’s Simplified UI.

OpenWorld has only reinforced my opinion.  Everyone here - Oracle product teams, Oracle partners, 3rd-party product providers - everyone is talking about and offering an enhanced UX.

So, I don’t consider good user experience design as a differentiator anymore.  I now see it as a necessity.  Enterprise software applications vendors must offer well-design UI to even have a seat at the table.

But what about custom-developed applications?  Good user experience still required.  You can’t expect user adoption without it.  In fact, I see the tools that facilitate good user experience design to be value-added products in and of themselves.


Good UX.  Don’t leave home without it.

Nobody Bunts With Two Strikes

Once upon a time, I coached a young women's fast pitch softball team.  Big adventure, as most of my coaching experience is with baseball, and I really enjoyed it.  One game, the opposing team's catcher was hitting with two outs and two strikes.  I shouted out to my team to stop covering the bunt - nobody bunts with two strikes (because a foul ball off a bunt attempt is strike three).  So my team's infield draw back.  Then the catcher bunts, laughing at me all as she jogs down to first base with a clean infield hit.  Yeah, I ate some serious humble pie.  And I learned to never bet on the past as an absolute limitation on possibilities for the present and future.

Today I know enterprise application developers who take the attitude that they've never had to worry about the user before, so why start now?  Hold that thought for a moment...

I've really enjoyed the unfolding story at Infor.  Their tag line is "Beautiful business software for your business processes."  Infor has baked the concept of beautiful design into their corporate culture, even so far as to invest in design firm Hook and Loop to drive design as a part of their corporate culture.  Infor actually considers design as a product and corporate differentiator.  Seems to be working for them.  $3B in annual revenue growing at a 40%+ clip is nothing to sneeze at.  And I suspect a bit of that success comes from the emphasis on User Experience design brought to Infor by CEO and Oracle alum Charles Phillips.

Oracle?  Yup.  The UX team at Oracle has proven that user experience design is a differentiating factor in the marketplace.  Simplified UI has played well with potential Fusion/Cloud customers.  So well, in fact, that the E-Business Suite is now adopting Simplified UI.  And the PeopleTools team seems to have enabled the adoption of many Simplified UI design patterns with the 8.54 release.  And that UX team continues to innovate with improved user experiences (which is much more than just UI) utilizing Fusion Middleware.

Oracle, Infor, Workday, SAP...they've all embraced the concept (admittedly, some more than others) that beautiful design sells while not-so-beautiful design is a competitive hinderance.

Now, let's consider that thought again.  "I've never had to worry about the user before, so why start now?"  Yeah, and nobody bunts with two strikes.

Thoughts? Opinions?  Find the comments.

OpenWorld - Absorb and Adapt

It's September.  Which means the marketing and sales nirvana that is Oracle OpenWorld is upon us.

OOW is a big show...one person simply cannot take it all in.  You have to "pick your spots".

In the spirit of my previous blog post, my focus at OOW this year is on absorbing and adapting.  I'm up to my eyeballs in a new market with Higher Education, and I'm still learning about those customers.  So that's my overall filter going into OOW - soaking up the information relevant to Higher Ed.  Means I'll be spend quite a bit of time at the Marriott Marquis, as that's where the Higher Ed events are taking place.  I'm specifically checking for news and messaging on:

• Oracle's upcoming Student Cloud and Higher Education Cloud offerings - especially news on the post-award Grants Management functionality under development for Oracle's Fusion Project Portfolio Management applications suite.

• How Simplified UI will be applied to Student Cloud

• Oracle Business Intelligence, especially Student Information Analytics

• The future, if any, for Informatica and Oracle BI - because so many colleges and universities use Informatica with Oracle BI today

• The upcoming release of Campus Solutions 9.2

• Mobile, especially in regards to the future direction of Campus Solutions Mobile and Oracle's Mobile Applications Foundation

I'll likely do some digging into some favorite areas as well, such as the EBS tech stack and new developments with Oracle ADF.  Might even do some digging into the latest info on the Oracle BPM Suite if the opportunity arises.

What I learn at OOW will probably set my direction for research, presentations, etc. for the coming year...that's the "adapt" part.

Only one presentation for me this year.  So I'll put in a plug for it right now.  I'm sitting on a panel for:

General Session: Oracle’s Future in Higher Education (GEN7628)
Tuesday, Sep. 30, 10:15-11:45 AM – Marriott Marquis – Golden Gate C3


Swing by and introduce yourself if you get a chance, especially if you're a customer or have an interest in Higher Ed.

One last thing:  I'm always interested in how others manage their time at OOW.  So find the comments and let us know what you're hoping to gain from OOW this year.

Adapt - Learn New Things

Nothing lasts forever.  Sand-piles crumble.  Companies rise and fall.  Relationships change.  Markets come and go.  It’s just the nature of things.  Adapt or die.  Personally, I like this feature of life…can’t imagine anything worse than stagnation.  There’s nothing better to me than exploring and learning new things.

As Oracle continues their push into cloud-based enterprise applications, we’re seeing some of that fundamental change play out in the partner community; with both partner companies and with the individuals who make up the partners.  This is especially true with the technology-based services partners.  Companies have merged or faded away.  Individuals, many of whom have stellar reputations within the partner and customer communities, have accepted direct employment with Oracle or moved into other technology eco-systems.

Why the big change?  Frankly, it’s because the cloud doesn’t leave much room for the traditional offerings of those technology-based services partners.  As we shift from on-premise to cloud, the need for those traditional offerings are drying up.  Traditional installations, patching, heavy custom development…all those things seem headed the way of the buggy-whip in the enterprise applications space.  It’s time to adapt.

As a guy involved in providing services and complimentary products myself, I’ve watched this change unfold over the past few years with more than a little self-interest and excitement - hey, ya gotta pay the bills, right?  As a result, I’ve identified three adaptation paths for individuals involved with services in the Oracle technology-based eco-system:

1.  Leave.  Find another market where your skills transfer well and take the leap.  This isn’t a bad option at all, especially if you’ve developed leadership and/or “soft skills”.  Believe it or not, there’s a big world outside the Oracle eco-system.

2.  Play the long tail.  The base of traditional, on-premise work will not disappear over night.  It’s shrinking, granted, but it’s a huge base even while shrinking.  I also think there will be a big uptick in small, lightweight projects with traditional footprints that will compliment large cloud-based enterprise application systems (for further information, see “Oracle Apex”).

3.  Learn new things.  Apply your background to build skills in new technologies.  If you’re an Oracle DBA or systems administrator (two skillets that are rapidly merging into one), dig into Oracle Enterprise Manager…and remember that private clouds will continue to flourish with Oracle’s larger customers.  If you’re a developer, begin building skills in middle-tier integration - connecting cloud offerings in new and creative ways is very much an in-demand skill.  Or get smart with building light-weight complimentary applications (ADF, BPM, SOA) - especially mobile (MAF).  If you’re a business analyst or functional type, get familiar with Functional Setup Manager and the Oracle Composers.  Maybe get a solid understanding of User Experience and how you can apply UX in your job.  As a solution architect, I’ve spent a great deal of time learning how the various Oracle Cloud solutions work together from data, integration, business process, and information perspectives…and if I can do it, so can you!

Obviously, my approach has been to explore and learn new things relevant to the market changes.  The opportunities I saw for myself consisted of connecting things together and adding value around the edges.  It’s been a hoot so far and I’m nowhere near done yet.  YMMV.

With Oracle OpenWorld coming up as a huge opportunity to learn new things, it seemed timely to share these thoughts now.  So there you have it.  My worm’s eye view of how the Oracle partner market (or at least the Oracle technology-based services partner market) is changing.  Maybe I nailed it.  Maybe I’m all wet.  Either way, let me know what you think.

Stitching Matters

photo credit to Deseret News Education Travel

Stitching matters.  Stitching holds disparate components and materials together in a form something close to what we had in mind as a solution to a problem. Could be clothes.  Could be wicker baskets.  In the tech world, stitching things together typically involves integrating components or services together into a unified solution.  And it matters. A lot.

I have a few applications on my mobile platforms that rely on integrated cloud storage services for saving my work.  Now, I've tried many cloud storage services. iCloud seems to be continually on the fritz for one reason or another.  Google Drive (or whatever they're calling it today) consumes CPU resources to the point that my devices start to smoke.  Dropbox has issues with losing data during sync. Box...well, they don't seem to really care about individual users anymore as they're not targeting enterprise users. Sky Drive, Live Drive, Hummingjay - you name it, I've probably tried it.  I finally settled on Copy: reliable, significant space for free, always working.

But, there's an issue with Copy.  Yup, you guessed it, no stitching.  I have yet to find spreadsheet, word processing, or presentation applications for mobile that integrate with Copy.  So I'll probably be moving back to Dropbox and leaving Copy...and backing up everything much more often.  Because I'd rather have a solution that works well some of the time than a solution that doesn't work at all.  Stitching matters.

Stitching is a differentiating factor in enterprise applications as well...especially if we're talking about SaaS.  From my worm's eye view of the enterprise applications market, I don't see many customers buying everything from a single SaaS vendor.  It's usually a mix of on-premise and SaaS, often involving multiple vendors. But those customers want unification across the enterprise:  single sign-on, single data source, consistent look and feel, a single business process, and so on.  So one of the bigger challenges in SaaS becomes stitching.  Not just doing it, but doing it well enough to meet expectations.  Stitching matters.

So when someone asks me for advice on choosing a SaaS provider, I always suggest that (among other things) potential buyers consider the stitching.  What integration comes pre-built out of the box?  Do the APIs and integration points comply with industry standards for SOAP and/or REST and/or JMS?  Are there cloud integration services available from the SaaS provider or a partner?  What stitching is available to handle larger data loads?  Can you do those data loads yourself or does the SaaS provider insist on doing them for you?  How about services integration with mobile platforms?  If the stitching doesn't meet your specific needs, will the SaaS provider assist?  If so, at what cost?  Stitching matters.

Now down to what Oracle has in regards to stitching ('cause Oracle is what I write about here).  It seems like Oracle is doing really well with service-based integration and application co-existence as their Cloud Application Services (aka Fusion Applications) continues to evolve.  

We're seeing an expansion of APIs and pre-built integrations, especially utilizing REST.  Both inbound and outbound integration of very light and simple data loads looks good as well.  The stitching in these areas looks pretty good.

Inbound and outbound integration for large and complex data loads, on the other hand, has some room for growth.  The tools are there, but the processes involved in using those tools in Oracle's Cloud still have some evolving of their own to accomplish.  But it'll get there.  Because Oracle's leadership knows: stitching matters.

Changing My Lab

As we continue to see more inroads made by cloud and SaaS technology, I have to admit to a downside...what can I work with in my local lab.

My local lab consists of two iMacs, an Apple Airbook, several arrays of 1-TB external hard drives from OWC, and a serious effort in leveraging virtual machines (I'm personally a VMware fan).  It wasn't too long ago that I could run most Oracle technology on my little lab platform.  And I like it that way...I prefer to have total control over all my prototyping and development environments.

But as Oracle transitions to the cloud, the software footprint for the various Oracle technologies I work with has just become too big for my lab platform. Fusion Applications, the Business Process Management Suite, OBIEE, the SOA Suite...heck, even E-Business Suite 12.2.x is pushing the limit.  Some of the footprint growth is due to new features, some to code bloat or technical debt, and some is just the nature of the beast with enterprise applications built for the cloud.

I'll also admit to being cheap here.  There's no subscription fees for AWS or Oracle Cloud coming out of my personal wallet.  Just not gonna happen.  And investing in new hardware seems to be akin to stocking up on buggy whips or vacuum tubes.

So, what's my plan?  My intent is to go back to basics for my home lab.  I can still run an Oracle database quite nicely (anything ranging from Enterprise to APEX to Express).  I can also run Oracle ADF (but, due to performance issues, I choose Glassfish over WebLogic).  OBIEE sample apps also fit and run well.  But I'll have to look to my company, my customer, or some other kind-hearted soul for bigger sandboxes - Fusion Apps or Middleware, OBIEE, and anything having to do with SOA integration or business process builds.  I'm not crazy about this solution, but it is what it is...

What about the rest of you out there?  How do you folks (especially the non-Oracle employees) handle your personal sandboxes these days?  Any ideas or suggestions?  Comments welcome.

UX - No Time To Kill

There’s no time to kill between the cradle and the grave

Father Time still takes a toll on every minute that you save

Legal tenders never gonna change the number of your days

The highest cost of livin’s dyin’, that’s one everybody pays

So have it spent before you get the bill, there’s no time to kill

                                        —From Clint Black’s “There’s No Time To Kill”

Ha! A classic country music pull…who’d have thunk it, huh?

There’s no time to kill is an appropriate phrase for the past few weeks in the Oracle UX world.  Lots of cool stuff happening.  To whit:

-  The brilliant and versatile Ultan O’Broin (@ultan) and the Oracle Applications UX team have released a free ebook on Simplified User Experience Design Patterns for the Oracle Applications Cloud Service.  Yup, it’s written for the recent R8 release.

-  In conjunction with the ebook release, Amis(@amis_services) and Oracle recently partnered together in putting on a great Next Generation UX showcase event in the Nederlands (you may need a little help from Google Translate to get the gist of this summary).

-  If you’re a member of the Oracle Partner Network, there is a new Guided Learning Path and Specialization:  Oracle Fusion Applications User Experience Specialist.  Yes, of course I jumped right in and earned mine.  And Steve Bentz (@smb1650) was “johnny-on-the-spot” as well.  It’s a challenging cert, but well worth earning…I learned a few things in the process. And I'm grateful that the test was offered online - no trudging down to a PeasonVUE test center.  Hello, 21st Century!

- In working with Higher Education customers, I’ve found a very cool (and free) prototyping tool for PeopleSoft, including Campus Solutions.  And it’s built in PowerPoint.  You can get a copy yourself here.  Very cool for those of you working with PeopleTools.

Busy, busy, busy time in UX…gotta keep up.  No time to kill.  

Moving Forward

Seems to be quite a bit of buzz in the enterprise software user community these days about moving forward.  Budgets have loosened up, users want better experiences, in-house IT providers want to reduce maintenance and infrastructure investments, C-level officers want better and more timely information on strategic initiatives, and everybody wants to be agile (even though there are multiple visions of agile, we all want it).  So it seems the big question lately is "how do we move forward"?

Most of my posts lately sound like "blasts from the past"...you can probably add this post to that category.  I'd recommend four things you can begin with right now in preparing to move forward:

1.  Move To The Latest Applications Release

If you're not on the latest release of PeopleSoft, Campus Solutions, E-Business Suite, or whatever packaged products you're using, get there.  Doing so will assure that you have the best platform to move forward from, in addition to making most transitions substantially less complicated.

2.  Prepare A Business Roadmap For Moving Forward

Another way to state this is is develop a description, in well-defined behavioral terms, for where you want your enterprise to be.  Note that this is not a technical roadmap, but more of a business-oriented roadmap.  Some considerations for that business roadmap may include:

3.  Inventory Your Enterprise Assets

Understand what assets you have on-hand that may help or hinder your way forward.  Were it me, I'd want five categories of existing enterprise assets:

• Business processes
• Applications (custom and packaged)
• Information (including both what we have and what we share with whom - they're different!)
• Projects
• Customizatons

4.  Reconsider your customizations

Customizations increase the cost of moving forward and extend the time required. That customizations list we built in step 3?  Why do we have those customizations?  Could we replace any of them with out-of-the-box functionality from shrink-wrapped applications?  What about an extension to a packaged application?  Do we still need the customization at all?  Should we rebuild the customization on a new technology platform?

So, there ya go.  Four things you can do today.  No consulting services or special tools required.  Just serious commitment on your part: get to the latest release of whatever you're using, describe your desired business end-state, catalog your enterprise assets and reconsider your customizations.  The discussion doesn't change, regardless of the tech platform you're currently using.

We'll talk soon about what comes next.  In the meantime, share your thoughts in the comments...and get busy!

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.

Hanging With The HEUG

So I'm hanging with the Higher Education User Group this week in Las Vegas; Alliance 2014.  It's been a year or so since I've gotten to Alliance, so it's pretty cool to be back here.  I'm also excited in general about working with Higher Education customers.  I've only been here for a day so far, but I've noticed some very obvious things already:

• The people here are almost desperate to provide their students with a 21st century experience.  They feel the need to have their student systems match the excellence found in their academics and research.
• Many of the schools struggle to implement well.  And it's not that they don't understand the technology.  The common theme seems to be one of organizational change management.
• While total cost of ownership is obviously a concern, system quality seems to be an even great concern with these folks...a positive in my book.
• Prior point notwithstanding, a huge issue for many international schools seems to be infrastructure reliability.  Things many of us take for granted (dependable electricity, broadband internet connections, physical hardware security) are huge issues in some parts of the world.

I've already heard some of this from my involvement in strategy and road mapping efforts for Io Consulting customers, but this conference is reinforcing all these themes.  I'm absorbing so much, especially in terms of this unique set of Oracle users, that it feels a bit like drinking from a firehose.  Lots of interesting stuff happening here.  I'll post more as the conference progresses, especially in light of what is shaping up to be a really big Monday. Stay tuned!

A Crazy Game Of Poker, Verse 2

A few months ago, I announced my resignation from EiS Technologies ("A Crazy Game Of Poker").  Another one of those leaps of faith - agreeing to part months ahead of time, not quite knowing where I was going next.  It's a great approach to parting ways with an employer if all parties can step up to behaving like grown-ups.  It gives the employer time to find and train a replacement as well as picking your brain for knowledge transfer, and it gives the employee time to search for the next gig without facing huge financial pressures.  It works well as long as all parties are mature enough to refrain from any vindictive behavior.

Big kudos to the leadership at EiS for stepping up through this time period and making it all work well.  EiS is a special place with a special team...I miss every bit of it.

I started a new adventure with Io Consulting in February.  I like the social value of the company's mission:  100% Oracle, 100% Higher Education, 100% Customer Satisfaction.  Each and every one of those elements are important to me.  My role will be building up Fusion Middleware and Oracle Cloud Applications Services capabilities within the company. So I'll continue to be deeply involved in User Experience, ADF, and the overall Fusion/Cloud Applications architecture.  I'll likely get into some PeopleSoft & Campus Solutions areas as well...it's been awhile since I've been intimately involved in either, so it'll be nice to get back there again.  So I'm very excited to join the Io Consulting team and look forward to what lies ahead.

In some ways, it will be weird: no more Collaborate or KScope, a little less emphasis on EBS, a more narrowly focused customer set.  But I'll get to attend Alliance on a regular basis (rather than the sporadic attendance of the last five years) and I'll still be a regular at OOW.  And the new management team uses the word "cool" on a regular basis, so that's a good indicator.  And I get to work with Ted Simpson - it gets no better than that!

OK, I'm done being self-centered now.  The next post will take us back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Fusion Applications: Some Suggested Reading

I just finished a really nifty book:  Oracle Fusion Applications Development and Extensibility Handbook.  Required reading for anyone working with Fusion Applications.

The organization of the book is one of the reasons I highly recommend it.  The first four chapters lay out a foundation of knowledge need by anyone working with Fusion Applications in a functional or technical role.  The remaining 11 chapters provide deep detail (including instructions with pictures) on personalizing, extending, and customizing Fusion Applications.  Loads of very cool techniques: I learned a few new tricks on how to use Jdeveloper and ADF with Fusion Applications without really messing up the works.

I was also impressed that the authors also tackle some of the more complex subjects fundamental to Fusion Application:  Run Time and Design Time Customization of SOA Components, Enterprise Scheduler Processing, and Integration with Fusion Applications.  On the latter subject, the fact that the authors shared details on the widely-unknown gems of Bulk Export and Bulk Import was very impressive.

The e-book version is destined for my iPad as part of my “go to” reference set.  If you’re working with Fusion Applications, you may want to consider adding this book to your toolkit as well.  It’s the real deal.

You can find and order the book at Amazon or Oracle Press.

Virtual tip o’ the hat to authors Vladimir Ajvaz, Anil Passi, and Dhaval Mehta - plus technical editor Gustavo Gonzalez.

14 for 14

So all the cool kids are sharing their predictions for 2014.  While I'm not much of a prognosticator, I thought it would be fun to share my own thoughts on the upcoming year.  If nothing else, we can all have a good laugh in 12 months over how poorly my crystal ball works.  Here we go:

1. The difference between fads and serious uptake will depend more than ever on whether we can figure out ways to add real value (better, faster, cheaper) for people and enterprises.  Wearable tech, big data, and the internet of things all fall into this category in 2014.

2. Enterprises moving to the public cloud will become a stampede in 2014.  The savings in total cost of ownership throughout the life cycle are just too good to pass up, security concerns aside.  Follow the money.

3. The combination of HTML5 and JavaScript for web development will continue to take the world by storm.  Frameworks (Oracle ADF, Twitter Bootstrap, Node.js) and design patterns make the builds easy and allow us to focus on the user experience design...which is the make or break point for web-based apps.

4. The differentiating factors for enterprise applications on the cloud will be:  ease of use, ease of services integration, ease of data integration, ease of simple customization, and cost.  Any product missing on any of these points will fizzle out, especially in terms of net new customers.  

5. Experienced enterprise applications customers, defined as those with more than five years experience under their belt, will realize that they’ve squeezed all the productivity gains available to them from automation.  2014 will be the year that the need for information from all that transactional data becomes the predominant demand from existing enterprise applications customers.  Which will make that ease of data integration point raised in #4 above a really, really big deal.

6. Hand-in-hand with #5 above, we’ll see a significant rise in 3rd-party reporting and BI solutions offering technology-agnostic “information as a service”.  Pentaho, Domo and Good Data are companies already well-positioned to take advantage of this trend.  OBIEE in the cloud could take off as well if the integration and pricing are right.

7. Somebody will finally figure out that your phone is not the right platform for complex reporting and analytics.  The phone, however, is a great platform for executing simple business transactions.

8. Oracle will continue with their transition from a database company to a technology company.  The transition will not be complete in 2014, but that’s not a worry…Oracle has the balance sheet to play a very long game.  And we will see concrete, measurable signs of their progress in 2014.

9. Oracle will also begin the evaluation of their numerous and somewhat disjointed array of products.  Those that make sense to the roadmap and those that make money will be separated from those that don’t.  Oracle management will begin working the exit plan for those in the latter set.

10. Technology consulting:  think consolidation and change here. Many implementers and integrators  will close up shop, unable to compete as the market continues to morph into a price-driven commodity space. Others will move into pure consulting plays, offering advice (road mapping, product selection, etc.) rather than implement/build services.  And some will shift into staff augmentation shops, offering services during workload peaks and specific projects.

11. Coupled with #4 above, we’ll see a significant rise in the acceptance and use of Integration-as-a-Service (“IaaS”); integration offered as a transparent service a la SnapLogic, Informatica Cloud, and MuleSoft.  One interesting angle in the mix, however…enterprise applications vendors will discover that a good API library will be a differentiating factor selling cloud-based applications.  SalesForce has this nailed already with their Salesforce1 platform.  

12. Enterprises will stop managing the mobile device you use as they figure out that the name of the game is managing resources, not devices.  As a result, any IT used by the enterprise will have to be platform-agnostic…’Droid, Windows, iOS, whatever else.

13. Watch for Amazon Web Services to lead an outpouring of new offerings from cloud vendors moving up the tech stack as the tech stack itself becomes less relevant:  platform-as-a-service (“PaaS”) and higher value services for enterprises.  Lots of returns available here in “adding value around the edges” of the enterprise.  This is another example of what I call the “gold rush business model”; check the history of any gold rush and you’ll see that it was not the miners who got rich, but the businesses selling supplies and services to the miners - adding value around the edges of the mining operations.

14. Oracle Fusion Applications will build more momentum in 2014, especially in the HCM market.  FUSE...The simplified user interface, combined with the SaaS offerings, will prove to be a sweet spot in adding value while lowering the cost.

So, there you have it - 14 predictions for 2014.  Thoughts, comments, discussion, critiques are all welcome...at least until New Year's Day ;)