Fusion Applications - By The 3's

My thoughts are coming at me in sets of three today…

I've been getting peppered with folks asking about whether or not they should take on Fusion Applications. Some are current Oracle customers and some are not…but I'm not sure that matters too much. The way I see it, different people will describe the value proposition for Fusion Apps in different ways, but it really all falls into finding value in one or more of three categories: the User Experience, the Applications Platform, and the Technology Adoption.

By the way, I freely admit that I stole the three categories from a slide shown repeatedly at OpenWorld this year, but the thoughts are my own...

User Experience

Anybody who reads here on a regular basis or talks to me for more than five minutes knows that I see the user experience (UX) as the biggest win in Fusion Apps. Three big reasons:

1) The UX is designed around shallow navigation, meaning the stuff you need to see is generally displayed on one page…fewer clicks. Lead to higher productivity for the people making their living with the apps.

2) The user interface is uses or is similar to tools we already know: the browser, Excel, instant messaging. Familiar look and feel…more productivity benefits.

3) Business Intelligence is cooked right into the apps. No leaving ERP apps to take a look at BI apps…but set that little blessing aside for a moment. The big win here is that you can leverage the BI elements to start managing by exception. Present the transaction exceptions to the analyst or specialist or whatever the correct title is this week rather than making them search for those exceptions…and let them fix those exceptions. Hmmm, analysis and management of exceptions…isn't that really the high-value activity we get from those analysts or specialist? Wow, this could actually free those folks up to do the job the boss wanted them to do when they were hired!

Applications Platform

Some folks (including me at times) really get pumped up at the thought that Fusion Apps are built with Oracle's Fusion development tools and run on Fusion MIddleware. But, to be honest, the folks with the checkbooks (the CFOs, the CEOs) couldn't care less. But they will care about three things:

1) Industry standards, which can actually work against vendor lock-in (including the redstack itself). One of the swell things about industry standards is that I can replace Oracle's industry-standard compliant components with another industry-standard compliant component…even some of that appealing open-source stuff. Replace JDeveloper with Eclipse. I've had good luck with using ActiveBPEL Designed with Oracle's Apps Server. And my E-Business test bed runs on CentOS Linux. So there's competition at the component level, and that's a good thing for both pricing and progress.

2) SOA. I personally like the SOA approach. We can get into discussions about Web Services versus REST and all sorts of nifty techie stuff, but that's not where the real appeal is for me. It's about reuse. One of the best ways to reduce costs in any effort is to build something once and use it many times. That's what services are all about. Build a service once and reuse it in many different processes for many different types of consumers. Play out this scenario to your CFO and watch the eyebrows arch with interest.

3) Getting back to industry standards, but with a point that merits individual consideration: loose coupling. The idea here is that if I build integration between two subsystems and one of those subsystems changes, the other subsystems and the integration I built will still work just fine. That's a huge cost saver when you're upgrading, or ripping and replacement, modules in your system. The applications platform in Fusion Apps leverages industry standards and SOA to make loose coupling the rule rather than the exception. More cost savings, greater flexibility - another nice case for the CFO's consideration.

Technology Adoption

Now, I know what you're thinking…what's the value to you just because Oracle is adopting some cool technology? In fact, doesn't that cost you money in the form of upgrading/relicensing? Hang with me through these three points and you'll get a feel for my perspective:

1) Think Modularity, which really ties back to that loose coupling argument I made earlier. Because of the technology upgrade, which supports loose coupling and industry standards, I can now uptake Fusion Applications on a modular basis: the apps are designed to co-exist with applications you already have in place. So if you have PeopleSoft HR, but like the Talent Management application in the Fusion Apps Human Capital Management Suite, it's doable. Ditto for Fusion Apps Project Portfolio Management with E-Business Financials. We're talking incremental uptake…moving forward in small steps. Less expensive, less disruptive moves forward than a "big bang"…appealing in this economic environment.

2) Cloud or SaaS. Oracle's been pounding this drum pretty hard lately, so I don't need to spend much time here. But think of this: If I can uptake incrementally, and I have interest in transitioning to a Cloud (maybe even inside my own firewall) or to Software-as-a-Service (either with Oracle or a 3rd-party), maybe it makes sense for me to go there incrementally? See the notes above on less expensive, less disruptive, etc.

3) Choices. Technology adoption gives you choices…falling behind the curve limits those choices. A non-Oracle example…my daughter bought an iPhone 3G a few months ago. Her idea was to jump on an iPhone and save a few bucks. Problem is that, just within a few months, the technology has passed her by: many apps won't run on her 3G iPhone (the apps need a 3Gs or a 4i). Fewer choices. Ditto for early adopters of Android phones, so don't blame it on Apple…it's just the nature of technology. My old Intel Pentium laptop is only good for Linux now…it can't run the latest Windows releases anymore. Fewer choices as technology moves on. Now here's the thing…as the choices wane, the higher the cost (effort plus dollars) of getting current - even if the dollar cost eventually drops, the effort continues to grow. Had I not upgraded that laptop several years ago, the effort of upgrading and moving all that data would be tremendous. Upgrading to E-Business 12.1.x from 11.5.10 is significantly less effort than upgrading from 11.5.4. Technology adoption provides more choices, and the competition amongst the choices keeps the cost of each choice lower - Adam Smith's "invisible hand" in action.

So, in a post-Oracle OpenWorld 10…after the Fusion Apps product launch, that's how I see it. Now your mileage could vary - you'll have to figure out the value in your own words for your specific situation. I just hope I gave you something to think about…in threes!

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!