Oracle Wants Your Input on Fusion Features

June 1, 2006 on 8:47 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Oracle Press | Enter Comments | Print Print | Email Email

Here is full text of the OAUG press release soliciting your feedback on strategic improvements to current Oracle E-Business Suite functionality:

Dear Oracle Applications User,

Have you had to customize a module to get the features you need? Would additional functionality save you time and money? Are you living with a work around that is increasing your cost of ownership?

As an Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) member and/or Oracle Applications user, Oracle is requesting your feedback on strategic improvements to current Oracle E-Business Suite functionality for their initial Fusion releases.

Submit your strategic requests via the OAUG Enhancement Request System (ERS) today!

Submitting and voting on requests is a four-step process:

    • Determine your strategic feature suggestions. Submit as many as you want, but be sure to provide a complete description so the reviewer and the Oracle product manager understands your request – don’t try to tell Oracle how to implement it, but be clear on what you need. A strategic feature is generally defined as functionality that has strategic value or a high impact on your current operations and is missing from the current module but would reduce your cost of ownership if it were available. For example: A Bank Reconcile feature for Oracle Cash Management. Bank reconciliations, unless you have a customization, are typically done manually and are very cumbersome and time consuming. Be sure to include customizations you have made, especially if you think they are generally applicable to other Oracle customers.
    • Initial strategic request submission. The stronger your business case, the more likely other OAUG members will vote for it and Oracle will accept your suggestion.
    • Review and acceptance of the requests and merging of duplicate or related requests. The ERS allows special interest group reviewers to evaluate and append to an existing request to ensure submissions accepted into the voting engine are of the highest quality. Your search of the ERS for requests similar to yours and submitting comments against it rather than submitting duplicates is every much appreciated and will make this task much easier.
    • Voting on the requests submitted. In order for you to vote, your OAUG key contact must designate you as an enhancements contact. Talk to your key contact to ensure you have access to voting. It is important for you to vote on all requests even if you have not submitted one, but please limit your votes to the applications you use. Voting starts June 26, 2006, and runs through July 17, 2006.

    2. Each accepted feature request qualifies the submitter to be entered into a drawing to win a free full-conference registration to COLLABORATE 07: Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community in Las Vegas, April 15-19, 2007.

    To learn more about how to use the OAUG ERS, please review the Users Guide (PDF file) or download and view the ERS demo (10.5MB) (Please note: this session was recorded via WebEx and requires the WebEx Player, which you may download and install from the WebEx Web site).If you have any questions, please contact the OAUG at enhancements@oaug.com or +1 404.240.0897.

    Your input is critical! Please log on to the ERS today and remember to vote beginning on June 26, 2006.

    Best Regards,
    OAUG Technology Commitee

What Do You Want in Oracle Fusion?

April 10, 2006 on 7:34 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | 3 Comments | Print Print | Email Email

I enjoyed every Oracle Fusion media story, blog blarticle, or conspiration theory out there. What’s not to like? The Fusion has all aspects of a real-life drama with big money, celebrities, layoffs, and destroyed competitors. But when the dust settles, it will come down to a simple question: What’s in Fusion for me and my company?

It seems that Oracle is figuring out what Fusion means to them and is better articulating their plans to the public. As of today, you could summarize Oracle Fusion as follows:

  • Existing Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel applications will be supported until 2013.
  • Oracle EBS 12 and PeopleSoft Enterprise 9 will be the last pre-Fusion applications released in late 2006.
  • First Fusion Applications will be delivered in 2008.

I am not worried about what Oracle will do. They are a smart bunch with all the resources in the world. They will keep doing what made them successful over the years. If you follow the Fusion developments, you already know that Oracle “will not be merging the existing Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, or Siebel code”, but instead, they will “take the best features from all acquired solutions and start developing brand new Fusion Applications”. John Wookey and other Fusion architects have stated several times that “Fusion will be an upgrade, not re-implementation”, and “the customers should standardize their processes and retire their customizations to most benefit from Fusion”. I am more concerned about what the rest of us will, or will not do.

I fully support the idea of standardization and no customizations. However, you can only avoid customizations if the functionality you need is provided with the standard application features. Oracle, like any other vendor, can only deliver so much in every release, and only “the best features” that you asked for the most (or sell the best) get the nod. And this is where it gets interesting. What does “best” mean? And is “best” good enough? What will get eliminated?

We All Get the Applications We Deserve

We get what we ask for. In case of Oracle Applications, we may get what we asked for with a multi-year delay. The feature scopes for both Oracle EBS 12 and PeopleSoft Enterprise 9 have already been finalized. If you want to impact the scope and direction of Fusion Applications, the time to act is now! Smart Oracle customers have been doing it for years. Have you asked yourself what you need for your next Oracle implementation? Did you get together with your teams to review your business requirements and needs? Do you want your existing customizations be replaced by standard Fusion functionality? Here is what you can do to get involved:

Now, out of curiosity, I looked at the OAUG Enhancement Request System to get a sense for a number of the submitted enhancement and Fusion requests. Below are the totals for some selected applications:

ERS Request Counts

I don’t know about you, but that does not seem like a lot to me. What is happening? Are people not informed, or are they skeptical about the process? Personally, one of the most frustrating parts of being a consultant is not being able to get directly involved in improving the applications. I don’t work for a preferred Oracle client, I don’t want to pay thousands of dollars to attend user conferences, and I don’t want to submit enhancement requests if I don’t know whether they get proper attention and be accepted in the next release. I suspect I am not alone.

Calling All Passionate Users!

If you are an expert user with real-life, hands-on experiences and ideas on how to improve the applications; if you want to get involved, but don’t know how or none of the available options works for you, then let’s try something different!

Let’s use blogs productively and keep a weblog of our Favorite Fusion Features. Let’s compile a list of improvement tips, enhancement requests and your best features in Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications. You can be as specific as you want. Let’s have discussions about what enhancements and features make most sense, and then log Fusion Requests before the Oracle’s June deadline. There won’t be any wrong questions or bad ideas (or at least, we’ll let the “group intelligence” decide).

Your involvement can be as easy as providing comments on a blog post, or creating a list of your application best features and enhancement requests and posting them on the weblog. It will up to you to decide. Send a link to this post to your colleagues and friends. Subscribe to the Favorite Fusion Features posts and comments!

Devil Is In Details

So in order to put my time where my mouth is, I have launched the Favorite Fusion Features series and started putting together enhancement ideas for Oracle Applications. Feel free to review, comment, and provide your own tips and ideas. My hope is to find more passionate users and consultants who will do the same either on their own blogs, or here at the Feature.

No Buzz at the Oracle Applications Day in Seattle

March 13, 2006 on 5:02 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Ideas and Opinions, Worth Noting | 1 Comment | Print Print | Email Email

I attended the Oracle Applications Day in Seattle today and I can summarize the event in two words: no buzz. I left with a feeling that everyone was tired of the status quo. There isn’t really much to talk about until the Release 12, due in late 2006. Oracle spent a good part of the day reassuring everyone that everything is going according to the plan, and delivering the official message:

  • Oracle Fusion is the next application release after Release 12, not a project.
  • Oracle Fusion is not a code merge, in contrary to what the competition would have you believe.
  • Oracle Fusion is EVOLUTION, not revolution. Customers can choose to upgrade when they are ready.
  • Current releases of Oracle, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications will be supported until 2013.
  • Oracle will give customers compelling reasons to upgrade before that.

I thought the most exciting presentation of the day was the XML Publisher: Applying Concepts delivered by Tomas Milowski from the Oregon Health and Science University.

Best Oracle Fusion “Halftime” Commentary Yet

February 20, 2006 on 10:12 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments | Print Print | Email Email

I have posted several references to the “Oracle Fusion – Half Way There” press conference news reports and articles before, but the I Pity The Fool commentary by Newmerix’s CTO Neil Robertson is the best one yet. Neil Robertson has provided an excellent, exhaustive (honestly, who has time to write a 5,379 word analysis?) educational, and entertaining essay about Oracle Fusion by pretending to be writing a press conference report. If you have anything to do with Oracle Applications, this one is a must reading!

Here is my favorite part:

…John Wookey: “We looked at the all the applications we had [PeopleSoft, EBS, JDE, and Siebel] and took the best requirements from each. We’re rewriting applications based on these requirements.”

Basically they realized they had four of everything and decided to rebuild a fifth from scratch. At first blush, this seems to make a ton of sense. Many have claimed that Oracle bought Siebel because of their recent prowess in industry specific process and features. Why shouldn’t they take that proprietary IP and work it into Fusion? But hang on, take a deeper look. Think through the reality of what this means to a customer trying to move to Fusion. Most likely, a lot but not all of your current application’s features will be present. Well, what do you do if your business process depends heavily on something that Oracle decided didn’t make the cut? You have two choices: “change your business process (and retrain your staff on how to use it) or, guess what, customize the Fusion application! We’re totally back to square one again.

Are You Eligible for Oracle Fusion Upgrade?

February 10, 2006 on 8:24 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments | Print Print | Email Email

You may have already heard the main soundbites from the Oracle Fusion press conference at San Francisco City Hall: “Oracle Project Fusion is no longer a project”, and is “Fusion is halfway done”. ZDNet‘s Dan Farber’s article Oracle Fusion: A functional spec in search of applications provides more details about what happened at the conference:

… (Oracle president) Charles Phillips said that Oracle would make sure that 80 percent of customers would be “eligible” to upgrade to the first release of Fusion when it is released. Eligible, he said, didn’t mean customers would be forced to upgrade, but he didn’t clarify exactly what “eligible” means. I would guess that customers who have the right versions of Oracle software and have primed their infrastructure are “eligible” to make the transition. Further clarifying the meaning of Fusion, Phillips said that the term would be used in three areas” attached to applications, middleware and the platform architecture…

… He also said … that with or without the acquisitions, Oracle was going to build a new platform based on Java, SOA and other standards. The billions spent on acquisitions provide “more customers, more people to help define applications and more resources…

… John Wookey, Oracle senior vice president of applications, took the stage and offered a definition of Fusion applications:

  • Based on best of what Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards have delivered
  • Built on a standards-based, commercially available development platform
  • Designed as a business intelligent application roles and tasks of individuals through business workflow
  • Service & event enabled, model driven – component isolation and easier to integrate with existing applications and fine-grained control over business process orchestration
  • Scalable and secure – take cost and risk out of deploying applications

…Wookey then went over the roadmap for Fusion. In 2005 Oracle delivered the Fusion architecture, Fusion Middleware certification and a functional assessment of the current set of applications as well as a superset of functionality (services) to be delivered for Fusion applications. This year, Oracle is slated to have the next versions of its applications: PeopleSoft Enterprise 9, JD Edwards 8.12 and Oracle EBS 12, with some integration of Fusion capabilities. PeopleSoft will include Fusion analytics and data hub technology, Oracle EBS 12 will be delivered on the latest Fusion Middleware release as well as with the Fusion data model. Some applications will begin migrating to the Fusion toolset…

…In addition, in 2006 Oracle will publish a services repository and enable business process flows that leverage Fusion Middleware… Oracle will have between 500 and 1000 major services in its repository, Wookey said… “The transition to Fusion] will be incremental and non-disruptive”he said…

…However, many customers add customer code to their applications and data models, which can make the transition difficult. Wookey said that Oracle is developing a tool that can inventory customizations where data models have been extended as a way to help manage upgrades…

…In 2007 individual Fusion applications will begin to appear, leading into 2008 when the entire suite of applications will be available. “The move to Fusion is an upgrade, not a re-implementation” Wookey said. Customers will be able to move to single instance or to segregate instances of specific applications as many customers do today, Wookey added…

It’s an upgrade as long as customers follow Wookey’s advice, which is to make sure that they adopt the latest releases (which are included in maintenance fees), retire customizations and unify operational infrastructure with Fusion Middleware and Grid. That is the hat trick for Oracle; if customers don’t continuously upgrade the transition to Fusion applications, the transition will be more laborious…

…Wookey’s key message to customers was to protect their investments by adopting the latest releases, retiring customizations and unifying their operational infrastructure with Fusion Middleware and Grid. That’s the only way for customers can evolve somewhat gracefully to Fusion and for Oracle to have a chance of ending up with a success story in December 2008…

My humble advice to Oracle customers is:

  • Get involved. Find ways to influence what “Best Features” from Oracle, Peoplesoft and JD Edwards are and what that means for you.
  • Go standard. Avoid customizations and adopt standard functionality and processes as much as you can. However, demand flexible tools to keep your customizations and data models if they cannot be replaced by standard functionality.
  • Learn What Features Will Be Eliminated Stay on top of the feature scope and find out what applications and features will be eliminated.

Oracle Applications Security Is Changing in Project Fusion

February 8, 2006 on 7:44 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments | Print Print | Email Email

There is an interesting story Oracle aims to tone security muscle with Fusion by the BuilderAU. It is about Oracle’s efforts to improve security features in its own applications, and applications acquired through mergers and acquisitions. Below are few key excerpts:

…(Oracle) is picking up tips from (acquired) operations and using them in a major overhaul of its business applications software, an initiative called Project Fusion. Other products and processes are benefiting, too. In return, Oracle is teaching its new employees something about security – literally.

…(Oracle) found that none of the companies it bought required security-specific training for staff. But Oracle does. So employees brought in from PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Retek and Oblix purchases, among others, are learning the ropes. All in all, Oracle hopes the security sum will be greater than its parts. “To make the merged organisation successful, we take the best of what they did and the best of what we do, and make it what the combined company does,” Mary Ann Davidson, Oracle’s chief security officer, said in an interview on Tuesday…

…Oracle isn’t saying much about security in Fusion or in any of its other products… but company representatives lifted the veil on the software maker’s endeavours to get all its security eggs into one basket. One lesson Oracle has learned from PeopleSoft is that less customisation equals fewer security risks. While Oracle has historically allowed developers to program on top of its applications, PeopleSoft took a more limited approach. Its software was mainly set up to let customers analyse their business processes, then build upon its applications…

…”What you can do from a security perspective in PeopleSoft is limited, while Oracle is more fine-grained and more customisable,” said John Heimann, director of security program management at Oracle. “Sometimes simplicity is good for security, because you can sometimes code yourself into a hole.”

… “Oracle allows developers to define security roles with a lot of flexibility, increasing the risk of mistakes and thus the introduction of flaws. For example, it is possible to restrict which user can access a specific part of an application based on very detailed rules. PeopleSoft doesn’t provide the same level of flexibility. We’re going to try and combine the simplicity and declarative nature of PeopleSoft and PeopleTools with the extensibility and flexibility of the Oracle applications framework” Heimann said.

…Another lesson partially learned from PeopleSoft is to ship products that have a high level of security out of the box, or at least provide an easy way to increase the security level – something Oracle calls the Secure Configuration Initiative. “In the past, our products have tended to be developer-friendly out of the box,” Heimann said. “There were accounts with easy-to-remember passwords like ‘Welcome1′, demo code, and things were set with permissions that were wide open”…

…”It will be there to a much greater extent in 11g, and it is a focus for Fusion,” he said. “That is the future: Security by default, and delivering it so you don’t have to be a sophisticated developer to implement security rules. For example, Oracle is thinking of allowing a system administrator to change security settings using a simple user interface or with drag-and-drop capabilities” Heimann said.

Take Your Time, Oracle Fusion, Take Your Time

January 23, 2006 on 8:00 pm | by Marian Crkon | In Worth Noting | Enter Comments | Print Print | Email Email

On the eve of the first anniversary of Oracle’s acquisition of Peoplesoft, Business Week published not one, but three articles on the subject. If you missed them, here are few excerpts. Start with the Oracle Lays Out Its Game Plan story published on January 19, 2005.

“…The Oracle CEO acknowledged that many people are worried he’s trying to make two very different corporate cultures work together – his own, known for it’s pit-bull aggressiveness, and Peoplesoft’s, best known for having a soft touch with customers. It’s a nice story for the press, Ellison says, but it’s not entirely true. “Trust me, Peoplesoft was a very, very aggressive company, or they wouldn’t have lasted in the [corporate software] business as long as they did,” he says.

He reiterated Oracle’s plans to support Peoplesoft’s products until 2013 and said his company will make no effort to nudge Peoplesoft customers toward other Oracle products, such as its database and so-called middleware software that helps big companies use their business systems over the Internet. Many Peoplesoft customers run their business software with other programs made by companies like IBM (IBM ) and BEA Systems (BEAS ). “Unless IBM should go out of business between now and then, that’s just something we can’t control,” Ellison deadpanned.

In the meantime, Oracle engineers are starting work on something dubbed “Project Fusion,” which will merge all three companies’ product lines. Customers, of course, don’t have to buy it. But Ellison believes it will offer strong technological incentive because it will be built entirely on computer programming standards such as Java and hypertext markup language (HTML). That would make the new software easier to manage and easier to connect to other, standards-based programs…”

I believe Oracle deserves benefit of a doubt, and a chance to execute their vision. I also believe they will need to change their behavior to improve their bad reputation of poor customer relationships. As for the rest of us, however, we deserve to be pessimistic. Can you remember roll-outs of Oracle Financials 11i, Oracle CRM or Oracle Order Management? Memories of those releases are still too fresh and painful to be ignored.

According to Oracle, Project Fusion is “Halfway Home”. See the Is Oracle’s Fusion Coming Together? story published on January 20.

… Oracle is not actually merging code of all of the disparate applications; rather, it’s taking the best features and ideas and rewriting the code, based heavily on Oracle’s eBusiness Suite…”…

…Oracle counters the pessimists that it’s giving customers an opportunity to ease into Fusion, by implementing certain features of the new application set in new versions of J.D. Edwards, Peoplesoft, and Oracle applications coming out this year…

…Meantime, SAP is planning to release a whole new application suite about a year before Fusion is complete, giving would-be clients yet another option. As for Wall Street, many still have the same impression they had a year earlier: It’s a compelling vision that could very well knock SAP on its heels, but it will be tough to pull off….”

I would love to be a fly on the wall during discussions where “best features” get selected from all different Oracle brands and products. If I were an Oracle, Peoplesoft or JD Edwards customer, I would want to make damn sure that my best people are present and heard in all strategy councils, customer advisory boards, and user groups out there.

Anyone who has ever been involved in any ERP implementation before knows how hard it is to make decisions about what and how gets implemented. It is all about making compromises. I am hopeful that Oracle has the right guy to make all interested parties reach consensus. I do not envy John Wookey one bit. I do agree he may have The Hardest Job In Silicon Valley.

… Typical of Wookey’s style was a four-hour meeting with his top staff on Jan. 4. Looking around the conference room, it was hard to tell who was in charge. Wookey didn’t sit at the head of the table, and he let others do most of the talking. As developers argued over arcane technical matters, Wookey weighed in to resolve debates — often by reminding them what customers had asked for…

There is no doubt in my mind there is any confusion at Oracle as to who is in charge. I am sure everybody is aware of who acquired whom. However, the devil is in details. Oracle will be under a lot of pressure to show results quickly. Let’s all hope they take the time to do it right and come up with better products when it’s all over.

Please provide comments or contact me at marian.crkon@itsafeature.com if you have any questions.

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