ERP Associates, Inc.

If you didn’t see Thursday’s Fusion Applications Unconference session, you missed out on the best Fusion Applications informational session in the whole conference.  Why was it so good? Because Oracle lifted the non-disclosure restrictions around Fusion Applications earlier that morning, and the people that have been the closest to the Fusion Applications can now speak freely about what they know.

And what do they know?  They LOVE Fusion Applications and they can’t WAIT until they are running in their respective companies. 

So what makes Fusion Apps so great?  From what I’m hearing, Fusion isn’t really a "fusion" of the best parts of PeopleSoft, EBS, JDE, Siebel, etc.  It was more of a ground-up redesign of everything based on how customers said they do business now.  As a result, Fusion focuses on end-to-end business process instead of module silos.  There is a lot of automation around those processes.  And information appears on the pages when and where you need it with additional information never more than a click away.

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I’ve been drinking from a fire hose all day today here at Oracle Open World but fortunately I’m getting questions answered and if this keeps up I’ll have met my goals for this week by tomorrow afternoon.  This certainly wasn’t the slow day I was expecting – it seemed like I went from one good session to another and often I couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with all of the information.  I’m back at the hotel early so I thought I’d point the firehose your way and see how much I can regurgitate before crashing.

One of my primary goals was to start getting all of the Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFMW) technologies categorized so I would know when to use which technologies, and which technologies would make sense within a PeopleSoft context since there’s overlap between what PS provides and what OFMW provides.  And the very first session, the PeopleTools Technology SIG, went a long way in helping me get that understanding.  In a nutshell, I found that most Fusion MW adoption by PeopleSoft customers happens in integration technology, Enterprise 2.0, and Security.

Integration makes sense to me intuitively because PeopleSoft will never be the center of all of your enterprise integrations no matter how good Integration Broker is.  But OFMW was designed for that and provides a nice integration stack to give you a central place to develop, design and manage integrations for your whole enterprise.  Adapters provide connectivity to over 400 different applications, the Oracle Service Bus “owns” all of the web services and moves stuff from one app to another statelessly.  BPEL orchestrates the integrations in a stateful way outside of any individual app so you can get a picture of where the integration is without having to drill into the individual apps.  And Business Alerts monitoring (BAM) provides real time information on business processes.  But if you’re doing PS to PS integration, it still makes the most sense to do it through good old integration broker.

Speaking of BPEL, not only is it a great tool to orchestrate integrations, it is also a great tool to manage workflow that crosses different applications.  I hope you’re starting to see a theme about when to use PeopleSoft technologies and when to use OFMW technologies.  Basically if a business process or integration happens within PeopleSoft applications, use the delivered PeopleSoft technology.  But if the business process or integration needs to interact with applications beyond the PeopleSoft boundaries, consider OFMW.

Business Intelligence is an example of something that normally crosses application boundaries, and many of Oracle’s acquisitions over the last few years (like Hyperion) are bearing fruit especially in how they integrate with Oracle applications.  PeopleTools 8.50 has been designed to give these BI products more access to PeopleSoft data than ever before using the new PS Query Access Services.  Not only can queries be invoked by the BI tools in PT8.5 (using web services), the BI tool can actually build the PeopleSoft query itself.

That's not the only new trick PeopleTools 8.5 has learned.  It also has some really good Enterprise 2.0 functionality – things like discussions, tags, RSS feeds and the like.  OFMW has robust Enterprise 2.0 functionality as well in Oracle Web Center.  So which one do you use?  Once again, when the Enterprise 2.0 rollout moves beyond PeopleSoft to your other Enterprise applications it’s time to dive into Oracle Web Center.

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2000 was an interesting year to be a PeopleSoft consultant. That was the year that PeopleSoft released their 8.0 product line.  8.0 was a special release because PeopleSoft had moved their entire architecture from a client-server application to a no-code-on-the-client HTML-based web application.

PeopleSoft had managed to convince their customers that their implementation partners wouldn't be effective if their consultants didn't have web development experience - which at the time only PeopleSoft's consultants had.  So without 8.0 experience, there was a good chance you'd be on the bench until you were able to get some type of experience in a web-based version. 

In reality the platform change wasn't that big of a leap for developers because App Designer essentially worked the same way and the learning curve wasn't all that steep.  So after a few months both PeopleSoft customers and consultants had made the transition to 8.0 and the rest is history.

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I took a video of the HCM portion of the Oracle Fusion demo Steve Miranda and Chris Leone presented on September 24.  I apologize for the poor quality, but it does show some of the cool stuff that Fusion HCM has.  The Org Chart functionality is nice.

You can find the video here.

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Steve Miranda, SVP of Fusion Application Development along with Chris Leone, Group Vice President, ERP Application Product Strategy walked through the Fusion Application features that will be in place for version 1, and gave a live demo of functionality within Financials, HCM and CRM.

As much as I liked the PeopleTools 8.5 and the PeopleSoft 9.1 preview I saw, they can’t quite match the elegance and efficiency of the Fusion UI.  Relevant business intelligence is pervasive at every level.  Dashboards are used not only to present an intuitive view of your data, they also serve a functional role to drive navigation throughout the application.  Collaboration functionality is so integrated and intuitive that you quickly take it for granted.  Graphics slide across the screen as intuitively as a power-point slide.  The work Oracle did in their usability studies has paid off substantially.

But the UI is just the surface.  Fusion is packed with new features to drive productivity.  The navigation model is still there, but it’s de-emphasized as the dashboards present users a role-based view of what needs attention, and navigation from the dashboards is easy and intuitive.  A single, role-based universal worklist is accessible from the app, and it is accessible from outside of the application via RSS.  Configurable “activity guides” walk you through the steps to complete semi-structured processes like on-boarding or period closes.

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As expected, there’s just not a lot of new information about Fusion Applications coming out of the conference this year.   But here’s what I’ve found so far:

What is Fusion?

Fusion is a strategy for a new enterprise software line called Oracle Fusion Applications based on Oracle Fusion Architecture.

There are basically 8 points that define an Oracle Fusion application.

1)    It is written and runs on an open modern middleware.
2)    It provides a new modern user interface so that the user experience is more productive, interesting and easier to navigate.
3)    It exposes business intelligence to end users
4)    (okay, I didn’t actually attend this session, I’ll have to look the other points up and get back to you)

EPM 11g was delivered this summer and meets the qualifications for a Fusion application.  As do the CRM applications that were announced at the last OOW and delivered earlier in the year.

Moving forward, Oracle will go through their complete stack of products and bring them into the Fusion fold.  Oracle has ordered these based on customer feedback.

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I guess Oracle Open World had a few surprises this year. Probably the biggest were Oracle's Linux announcements. Off the top of my head, they were:

1) Oracle would start supporting Red Hat Linux at rates cheaper than Red Hat, and provide fixes for current and prior releases.
2) Oracle would start distributing their own Enterprise Linux
3) Oracle would provide legal indemnification for Linux users

All of these things seemed to put Redhat in Oracle's crosshairs, who would have had a bad week anyway with the new Microsoft/Novell agreement and all. My hat is off to Redhat who made Linux successful enough for the world's biggest software companies to target their business. Well done! To see Redhat's responses to these new threats, check out Redhat's home page.

So what is Enterprise Linux? According to Oracle,

Enterprise Linux is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. Enterprise Linux conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (Enterprise Linux mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.)

You can download Enterprise Linux from http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux. You have to agree to some things that aren't necessarily in the GNU Public License before you even get to the download. Here are some of the things you'll have to accept:

We are willing to provide a copy of the Enterprise Linux programs to you only upon the condition that you accept all of the terms contained in this Agreement.

In case you're wondering who owns Enterprise Linux, this should clear it up (or not):

Ownership. The Enterprise Linux programs and their components and the Additional Enterprise Linux programs are owned by Oracle or the relevant third party. Subject to the licenses granted and/or referenced herein, title to the Enterprise Linux programs and their components and the Additional Enterprise Linux programs remains with Oracle and/or the third party, as appropriate.

Can you distribute this thing according to the terms in the GNU General Public License? Maybe, but first read this:

No Trademark License. This agreement does not permit you to distribute the Enterprise Linux programs or Additional Enterprise Linux programs using Oracle's or its affiliates' trademarks.
...
Certain files ... include such trademarks; therefore, in order to avoid infringement, you will need to modify those files to remove the relevant marks before distribution. Do not delete these files, as deletion may corrupt the Enterprise Linux programs or Additional Enterprise Linux programs.

OK, but you should be able to use it on as many servers in your enterprise as you like as long as you don't redistribute it. But don't expect me to seed a torrent download from my web site any time soon because I don't want to get sued by Oracle -- and because it's completely unnecessary.

Once nice thing about Enterprise Linux is that you can download it quickly from a Oracle's dedicated eDelivery servers free of charge -- no torrents necessary. This alone would be enough to make me switch from most other distributions. Once you download all of the files and unzip them to their iso files, you can burn them to CD and boot from the CD's you created.

I didn't have a spare machine and I hate dual boot, so I decided to install it to a virtual machine running under Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2. I know VMWare is better for Linux and all that, but my VMWare server license expired and I've been too lazy to get a new one.

Overall the install process was much improved since I last installed Mandrake Linux on my 64-bit AMD processor a couple of years back. I especially liked the automatic disk partitioning and more intuitive interface to select packages. I did find a reference to RedHat in one install screen, but maybe the RedHat lawyers won't notice.

Anyway, the install process went off without a hitch. The system rebooted, and I completed the final configuration steps. It rebooted again, and when it came back the display was so wacked out that I couldn't read a friggin thing. Turns out I should have selected thousands of colors instead of millions of colors. But I can't complain too much -- what do you expect when you're creating the unholy combination of Linux running under Microsoft Virtual Server?

After installing Microsoft's Virtual Machine Additions for Linux, my new Virtual Machine was looking like a million bucks. I fired up Firefox, browsed to a few web sites, etc.

I can't wait to install an Oracle DB, OAS, Tuxedo, and PeopleSoft Enterprise it. I'll let you know how it goes.

If you're interested in a few pictures, check out the screenshot slideshow, which works great with FireFox but may not work with IE7.

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While I haven't seen anything on Customer Connection, there has been some buzz about how Oracle is soliciting its customer's input on features to include in the future Fusion release.

I really hope that the PeopleSoft user community is having its voice heard. If you're interested in contributing, please log on to the Oracle Application Users Group Enhancement/Feature Request System here and let Oracle know what features you depend on in PeopleSoft, and what you would features you would like to see added to replace some of your bigger customizations.

Also, Oracle is still soliciting your customization information. You can find more information here and here.

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Mark Rittman has a great XML Publisher article available on OTN.

Part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware family of products, Oracle XML Publisher 5.6.2 is a Java-based product that gives you the ability to define, publish, secure and schedule reports built using SQL and XML data sources. Originally developed as a technology within E-Business Suite, Oracle XML Publisher is now available for download from eDelivery as a stand-alone product, and can be deployed using J2EE application servers such as Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J) or Apache Tomcat. Best of all, XML Publisher uses familiar desktop tools such as Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat to define report layouts, meaning that users can design their reports in a familiar environment without having to install and learn a whole new toolset.

PeopleSoft Enterprise will integrate XML Publisher in PeopleTools 8.48, so it'll be a good idea to start getting familiar with it.

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Double Dubs has a new posting about what Oracle Fusion is really all about.

Fusion is not only an attempt at releasing an integrated suite of applications from the Oracle, PS, JDE, and Sieble lines. In fact, that’s the least of what Fusion represents. The real goal of Fusion is to present a process integration layer that spans across all your organization’s applications, regardless if they are Oracle apps or not.

He goes on to say that the middleware that enables this integration is available today.

I think he's right in that the integration aspirations of Oracle Fusion haven't been discussed nearly as much as the effort create a comprehensive frankenstein application. I wonder if the integration story hasn't been as well received because of past poor EAI experiences.

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