The Feature

The Importance of Being 12

August 18, 2006 on 11:23 am | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

With apologies to Oscar Wilde for the title of this post, may I take a moment to consider the importance of Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12? R12 is due for release in the last quarter of 2006. As more information becomes available, each Oracle customer will have to decide for themselves whether or not a move to R12 has value for them. Some of us may opt to stick with what we have until the Fusion Applications picture becomes clear. Some will see value in R12 and make the leap in relatively short order. Others may move to another product line (or apps vendor) altogether. Irregardless of our individual choices, R12 is important to everyone in the applications market space (including those who are not Oracle customers) because it’s an important step in the progress to achieving Oracle’s ambitious vision for Fusion Applications.

Please don’t misconstrue my meaning: R12 has importance, at least for Oracle E-Business customers, for reasons other than Fusion. R12 has 12 new application modules and over 2,300 new features, including the SWAN user interface, sub ledger accounting, new HRMS localizations, improved support for APAC manufacturing practices, Retek integration, and several new industry-specific business flows. Discounting R12 without seriously considering whether it holds significant value for your organization would be foolish, and I don’t mean to do so here. But my contention is that Release 12 represents a significant proof-point in the Fusion Applications evolution, and that the importance to Fusion is R12′s most essential feature.

R12 will be the first complete E-Business Suite release on Fusion middleware. This is the next step in a series of iterations toward Fusion applications technology that started with the Early Adopter Program for integration of 11i with the 9i Applications Server. While R12 is definitely not a Fusion Applications release, delivery of a high-quality E-Business Suite release on Fusion middleware will constitute a major milestone on the road to Fusion Applications.

E-Business Suite customers are about to find out just how well and reliably Fusion technology works with our apps environment, and the entire applications space is about to discover just how much progress Oracle has made in integrating all the moving pieces of this giant and complex technical puzzle. In other words, the rubber is about to meet the road…it should be an interesting drive!

Shouting Out to JDE and Siebel Customers

August 10, 2006 on 10:49 am | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

I’m involved in an effort sponsored by Oracle to develop profiles for Oracle apps customers and divide those profiles into customer types, so that Oracle can develop roadmaps to Fusion Applications for each of those different types of customers. This effort is a collaboration between Oracle and The International Oracle Users Council (IOUC). You can learn more about it here. We’ve been working this effort for several weeks and have gathered together a good sampling of E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft customers. However, we’re still working to collect information from JD Edwards and Siebel users. So I’m “shouting out” to JDE and Siebel customers.

If your organization is a JD Edwards or Siebel customer wiling to share some high-level technical information with Oracle, you have an opportunity to influence the direction of Fusion Applications. Please leave a comment on this post with an email contact before August 15, 2006. I’ll be happy to help you create and submit a profile.

Ketchup or Mustard? SOA and Enterprise 2.0

August 4, 2006 on 9:00 am | by Floyd Teter | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments |  Print |  Email

By now, we’ve all read and heard that Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the foundation for the next generation for Enterprise Applications. In fact, I’ve written in support of such a proposition myself. Lately, however, I’ve found myself reconsidering my viewpoint as I’ve run into the concept of Enterprise 2.0. Choosing between the SOA and Enterprise 2.0 approaches for Enterprise Applications is like choosing between mustard and ketchup for my burgers…the best burgers have a bit of both.

Dr. Andrew McAfee is an Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School. Amongst other things, he authors the faculty blog The Impact of Information Technology (IT) on Businesses and their Leaders. Dr. McAfee’s blogging includes quite a few articles on the concept of Enterprise 2.0.

According to Dr. McAfee, “Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.” He continues to break down the concept with the following definitions:

Social Software enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities. Platforms are digital environments in which contributions and interactions are globally visible and persistent over time. Emergent means that the software is freeform, and that it contains mechanisms to let the patterns and structure inherent in people’s interactions become visible over time.

Freeform means that the software is most or all of the following:

• OptionalFree of up-front workflow

• Egalitarian, or indifferent to formal organizational identities

• Accepting of many types of data

In contrast to Dr. McAfee’s definition of Enterprise 2.0, XML.com defines SOA as “…an architectural style whose goal is to achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents.” In other words, SOA is an approach for getting modules of code and/or different computers to interact with each other.

In light of these definitions, there are a couple of important conceptual differences between Enterprise 2.0 and SOA that may impact your perspective much as they did mine.

SOA is concerned with communication between computers, eliminating the need for intervention or interaction by people. Enterprise 2.0 is concerned with collaboration between people with the aid of technology.

SOA is an approach that must be imposed, preferably at the beginning of the architectural design process. Imposing a structure usually constrains the ability to apply “lessons learned”, as a set of goals, or business rules, or a vision must be defined so that the structure will support achieving the desired end-state. Enterprise 2.0 organically develops as time passes. The trick here is to have a means of identifying and communicating the patterns that emerge. Those patterns become the structure.

Both approaches have their appropriate uses. When the need arises for flexibilty, allowance for minor errors, developing inferences from data, or real-time adjustments outside of stated constraints, there is no substitute (yet) that matches the human mind. The Enterprise 2.0 approach shines in these situations. When the call is for enabling processes that must comply with specified rules or meet strict standards, especially while communicating between different technical platforms or software agents, the structured approach of SOA is clearly the better choice. SOA is an appropriate option when a high level of structure in the technical architecture is required. When the focus is on collaboration, especially iterative learning and collaboration, the Enterprise 2.0 approach fits well.

So, what does this mean for those of us swimming in the sea of change that constitutes today’s Enterprise Applications market? I think it means we need to carefully consider both approaches and how to successfully apply each as we move forward, whether we’ve moving forward with Oracle E-Business Release 12, Fusion Applications, or the next release of any other enterprise applications. For example, SOA may be the right solution for integrating our various business applications, but Enterprise 2.0 may be the more appropriate approach for collaborating on the integration project itself.

The bottom line here is that the successful implementations of the next generation Enterprise Applications will involve use of both the SOA and Enterprise 2.0 approaches.

You can learn more about Enterprise 2.0 here.