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  • Top 10 Reasons to Attend the 7th Annual Maintenance Summit

    - by Stephen Slade
    Some of you may be sitting the fence before registering for the Oracle Maintenance Summit 2013. Here are 10 solid reasons to register in the next 3 weeks: 1. It's the 'IN' red carpet maintenance event for 2013. The summit will have one of the greatest concentrations of maintenance best practices, case studies and success stories that can catapult your organization. 2.  Return a Hero! Hear how you can drive reliability and operational excellence back home at the plant!  3. Learn the Roadmap! Hear form product experts who will discuss the vision, strategy and roadmap for Oracle products 4. See Product Demos! All the SCM/EAM rich products will be exhibited by both sales consultants and developers. Ask the hardest question you can think of and be ready for a great response. 5. Meet our Partners! There will be a good number of supporting partners exhibiting at the summit. Hear and learn of what ingredients make for success. 6. Join a panel or discussion group! Raise your hand and be heard – have your questions answered. Contribute to the discussion. 7. Network with your peers. Rub elbows with your fellow maintenance managers and operations supervisors. Talk shop here! 8. 6 Summits under one roof. Hear and share supply chain information at one of the other summits taking place concurrently. Bring other team members and secure the group discount. 9. Save $100, register by Dec 31 for the early bird rate. Hotel will fill fast.  www.oracle.com/goto/vcs 10. Have a great time! The Summit is both informational and enjoyable. Set at the waterfront in downtown San Francisco at the Embarcadero, the summit will be a fun-filled and enjoyable experience.

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  • Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group - How SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services could change yo

    - by dmccollough
    Bio: Corey Roth is a consultant at Stonebridge specializing in SharePoint solutions in the Oil & Gas Industry. He has ten plus years of experience delivering solutions in the energy, travel, advertising and consumer electronics verticals. Corey has always focused on rapid adoption of new Microsoft technologies including Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, LINQ, and SilverLight. He also contributed greatly to the beta phases of Visual Studio 2005. For his contributions, he was awarded the Microsoft Award for Customer Excellence (ACE). Corey is a graduate of Oklahoma State University. Corey is a member of the .NET Mafia (www.dotnetmafia.com) where he blogs about the latest technology and SharePoint. Abstract: How SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services could change your life - The New BDC How many hours have your wasted building simple ASP.NET applications to do nothing more than simple CRUD operations against a database.  Many tools have made this easier, but now it's so easy, you'll be up and running in minutes.  This session will show you hot easy it is to get started integrating external data from your line of business systems in SharePoint 2010.  You will learn how to register an external content type using SharePoint Designer based upon a database table or web service and then build an external list.  With external lists, you will see how you can perform CRUD operations on your line of business directly from SharePoint without ever having to do manual configuration in XML files.  Finally, we will walk through how to create custom edit forms for your list using InfoPath 2010. Agenda: 6pm - 6:30 Pizza and Mingle - Sponsored by TekSystems 6:30 - 6:45 Announcements 6:45 - 7:45 Presentation! 7:45 - 8:00 Drawings and Door Prizes Location: TCC (Tulsa Community College) Northeast Campus 3727 East Apache Tulsa, OK 74115 918-594-8000 Campus Map | Live | Yahoo | Google | MapQuest Door Prizes: We will be giving away one of each of these: XBox 360 - Halo 3 ODST Telerik Premium Collection ($1300.00 value) ReSharper ($199.00 value) SQLSets ($149.00 value) 64 bit Windows 7 Introducing Windows 7 for Developers Developing Service-Oriented AJAX Applications on the Microsoft Platform Sponsors: Thanks to our sponsors: TekSystems - Thanks for purchasing the Pizza for our meetings. ISOCentric - Thanks for providing us hosting for the groups web site. Tulsa Community College - Thanks for providing us a place to have our meetings. NEVRON - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. INETA.org - For allowing us to be a Charter Member and providing awesome Speakers! PERPETUUM Software - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. Telerik - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. GrapeCity - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. SQLSets - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. K2 - Thanks for providing us prizes to give away. Microsoft - For providing us with a lot of support and product giveaways! Orielly books - For providing us with books and discounts. Wrox books - For providing us with books and discounts. Have any special requests? Let us know at this link: http://tinyurl.com/lg5o38. RSVP for this month's meeting by responding to this thread: http://tinyurl.com/yafkzel . (Must be logged in to the site) Be SURE to RSVP no later than Noon on April 12th and you will get an extra entry for the prize drawings! So, do it now, before you forget and miss out! Show up for the first time or bring a new buddy and you both get TWO extra entries!

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  • BI and EPM Landscape

    - by frank.buytendijk
    Most of my blog entries are not about Oracle products, and most of the latest entries are about topics such as IT strategy and enterprise architecture. However, given my background at Gartner, and at Hyperion, I still keep a close eye on what's happening in BI and EPM. One important reason is that I believe there is significant competitive value for organizations getting BI and EPM right. Davenport and Harris wrote a great book called "Competing on Analytics", in which they explain this in a very engaging and convincing way. At Oracle we have defined the concept of "management excellence" that outlines what organizations have to do to keep or create a competitive edge. It's not only in the business processes, but also in the management processes. Recently, Gartner published its 2009 market shares report for BI, Analytics, and Performance Management. Gartner identifies the same three segments that Oracle does: (1) CPM Suites (Oracle refers not to Corporate Performance Management, but Enterprise Performance Management), (2) BI Platform, and (3) Analytic Applications & Performance Management. According to Gartner, Oracle's share is increasing with revenue growing by more than 5%. Oracle currently holds the #2 market share position in the overall BI Software space based on total BI software revenue. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 Gartner has ranked Oracle as #1 in the CPM Suites worldwide sub-segment based on total BI software revenue, and Oracle is gaining share with revenue growing by more than 6% in 2009. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 The Analytic Applications & Performance Management subsegment is more fragmented. It has for instance a very large "Other Vendors" category. The largest player traditionally is SAS. Analytic Applications are often meant for very specific analytic needs in very specific industry sectors. According to Gartner, from the large vendors, again Oracle is the one who is gaining the most share - with total BI software revenue growth close to 15% in 2009. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 I believe this shows Oracle's integration strategy is working. In fact, integration actually is the innovation. BI and EPM have been silo technology platforms and application suites way too long. Management and measuring performance should be very closely linked to strategy execution, which is the domain of other business application areas such as CRM, ERP, and Supply Chain. BI and EPM are not about "making better decisions" anymore, but are part of a tangible action framework. Furthermore, organizations are getting more serious about ecosystem thinking. They do not evaluate single tools anymore for different application areas, but buy into a complete ecosystem of hardware, software and services. The best ecosystem is the one that offers the most options, in environments where the uncertainty is high and investments are hard to reverse. The key to successfully managing such an environment is middleware, and BI and EPM become increasingly middleware intensive. In fact, given the horizontal nature of BI and EPM, sitting on top of all business functions and applications, you could call them "upperware". Many are active in the BI and EPM space. Big players can offer a lot, but there are always many areas that are covered by specialty vendors. Oracle openly embraces those technologies within the ecosystem as well. Complete, open and integrated still accurately describes the Oracle product strategy. frank

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  • Bancassurers Seek IT Solutions to Support Distribution Model

    - by [email protected]
    Oracle Insurance's director of marketing for EMEA, John Sinclair, attended the third annual Bancassurance Forum in Vienna last month. He reports that the outlook for bancassurance in EMEA remains positive, despite changing market conditions that have led a number of bancassurers to re-examine their business models. Vienna is at the crossroads between mature Western European markets, where bancassurance is now an established best practice, and more recently tapped Eastern European markets that offer the greatest growth potential. Attendance at the Bancassurance Forum was good, with 87 bancassurance attendees, most in very senior positions in the industry. The conference provided the chance for a lively discussion among bancassurers looking to keep abreast of the latest trends in one of Europe's most successful distribution models for insurance. Even under normal business conditions, there is a great demand for best practice sharing within the industry as there is no standard formula for success.  Each company has to chart its own course and choose the strategies for sales, products development and the structure of ownership that make sense for their business, and as soon as they get it right bancassurers need to adapt the mix to keep up with ever changing regulations, completion and economic conditions.  To optimize the overall relationship between banking and insurance for mutual benefit, a balance needs to be struck between potentially conflicting interests. The banking side of the house is looking for greater wallet share from its customers and the ability to increase profitability by bundling insurance products with higher margins - especially in light of the recent economic crisis, where margins for traditional banking products are low and completion high. The insurance side of the house seeks access to new customers through a complementary distribution channel that is efficient and cost effective. To make the relationship work, it is important that both sides of the same house forge strategic and long term relationships - irrespective of whether the underlying business model is supported by a distribution agreement, cross-ownership or other forms of capital structure. However, this third annual conference was not held under normal business conditions. The conference took place in challenging, yet interesting times. ING's forced spinoff of its insurance operations under pressure by the EU Commission and the troubling losses suffered by Allianz as a result of the Dresdner bank sale were fresh in everyone's mind. One year after markets crashed, there is now enough hindsight to better understand the implications for bancassurance and best practices that are emerging to deal with them. The loan-driven business that has been crucial to bancassurance up till now evaporated during the crisis, leaving bancassurers grappling with how to change their overall strategy from a loan-driven to a more diversified model.  Attendees came to the conference to learn what strategies were working - not only to cope with the market shift, but to take advantage of it as markets pick up. Over the course of 14 customer case studies and numerous analyst presentations, topical issues ranging from getting the business model right to the impact on capital structuring of Solvency II were debated openly. Many speakers alluded to the need to specifically design insurance products with the banking distribution channel in mind, which brings with it specific requirements such as a high degree of standardization to achieve efficiency and reduce training costs. Moreover, products must be engineered to suit end consumers who consider banks a one-stop shop. The importance of IT to the successful implementation of bancassurance strategies was a theme that surfaced regularly throughout the conference.  The cross-selling opportunity - that will ultimately determine the success or failure of any bancassurance model - can only be fully realized through a flexible IT architecture that enables banking and insurance processes to be integrated and presented to front-line staff through a common interface. However, the reality is that most bancassurers have legacy IT systems, which constrain the businesses' ability to implement new strategies to maintaining competitiveness in turbulent times. My colleague Glenn Lottering, who chaired the conference, believes that the primary opportunities for bancassurers to extract value from their IT infrastructure investments lie in distribution management, risk management with the advent of Solvency II, and achieving operational excellence. "Oracle is ideally suited to meet the needs of bancassurance," Glenn noted, "supplying market-leading software for both banking and insurance. Oracle provides adaptive systems that let customers easily integrate hybrid business processes from both worlds while leveraging existing IT infrastructure." Overall, the consensus at the conference was that the outlook for bancassurance in EMEA remains positive, despite changing market conditions that have led a number of bancassurers to re-examine their business models. John Sinclair is marketing director for Oracle Insurance in EMEA. He has more than 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services.    

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  • How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization

    - by Mike Stiles
    The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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  • Vitality of Product Information Management Showcased at OpenWorld 2012

    - by Mala Narasimharajan
     By Sachin Patel Can you hear the countdown clock ticking!! OpenWorld 2012 is almost here and as I write this Oracle is buzzing with fresh new ideas and solutions that will be showcased this year. What an exciting time for all of us to be in midst of a digital revolution. Whether it is Apple fans clamoring to find every new feature that has been added to the iPhone 5 or a startup launching a new digital thermostat (has anyone looked at the new one from Nest ), product information is a vital for companies to grow and compete in this cut-throat market. Customer today struggle to aggregate and enrich this product data from the myriad of systems they have in place to run their businesses and operations. Having a product information strategy is paramount to align your sales channels and operations with the most accurate and upto date product data. We have a number of sessions this year at OpenWorld where you can gain more insight into how Oracle’s next generation of Fusion Applications, in this case Fusion Product Hub can provide you with a solution to streamline and get control of your Product Master Data. Enabling Trusted Enterprise Product Data with Oracle Fusion Product HubTuesday, October 2nd 11:45 am, Moscone West 2022 Join me Sachin Patel, Director of Product Strategy and Milan Bhatia, VP of Development as we discuss how you can enable trusted product master data in your enterprise. In this session we plan to cover the challenges companies face today in mastering product data. The discussion will also include how Fusion Product Hub brings new and innovative features to empower your product data owners to create a holistic and rich product definition that can be leveraged across your enterprise. We will also be joined by Pawel Fidelus from Fideltronik an Early Adopter for Fusion Product Hub who will showcase their plans to implement Fusion Product Hub and the value it will bring to Fideltronik Multichannel Fulfillment Excellence in Direct-to-Consumer Market Thursday, October 4th, 12:45 am, Moscone West 2024 Do you have multiple order capture systems? Do you have difficulty in fulfilling orders for your customers across various channels and suppliers? Mark Carson, Director, Fusion DOO and Brad Kerr, Director, AGSS will be showcasing the Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration solution and how companies can orchestrate orders from multiple order capture systems and route them to the appropriate fulfillment system. Sachin Patel, Director Product Strategy for Product MDM will highlight the business pain points in consolidating and commercializing data from a Multi Channel Commerce point of view and how Fusion Product Hub helps in allowing you to provide a single source of truth to drive a singular and rich customer experience. Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management: Customer Adoption and Experiences                                                Wednesday, October 3rd 10:15 am, Moscone West 2003 This is a great session to attend to learn about how Fusion Supply Chain Management and Fusion Product Hub Early Adopters, including Boeing and Fideltronik are leveraging Fusion Applications to improve their Supply Chain operations. Have a great OpenWorld and see you soon!!

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  • A Guide to Fusion SCM at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

    - by Pam Petropoulos
    Are you attending next week’s Oracle OpenWorld 2012 conference? Then you won’t want to miss the Fusion SCM activities and customer presenters from leading companies like Boeing and Fideltronik. Below you’ll find a day by day guide of the various Fusion SCM sessions, demos and activities during OpenWorld 2012, September 30 – October 4 in San Francisco, CA. Tuesday, October 2 All of the Fusion SCM sessions during OpenWorld will take place in various rooms at Moscone West, a convenience you are sure to appreciate, as will your feet.   The first session at 10:15 – 11:15 am (Moscone West, Room 2006), entitled “Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management: Overview, Strategy, Customer Experiences, and Roadmap”, provides an overview of Fusion Supply Chain Management applications and will discuss Fusion SCM strategy, future roadmap, and highlights of customer examples. The next session at 11:45 am – 12:45 pm (Moscone West, Room 2022), entitled “Enabling Trusted Enterprise Product Data with Oracle Fusion Product Hub”, may be the session for you if you’re struggling with achieving consistent, high-quality product data that provides significant business value. This session will discuss how Oracle Fusion Product Hub and Oracle Enterprise Data Quality can help you to achieve this vision. A customer presenter from Fideltronik will share their experiences with Oracle Fusion Product Hub. At the end of the day unwind at the Supply Chain Management customer reception from 6:00 – 8:00 pm at the Roe Lounge, located at 651 Howard Street. Registration is required. Click here for details. Wednesday, October 3 Wednesday is a busy day with three Fusion SCM sessions on the agenda. Start your day at 10:15 am at the “Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management: Customer Adoption and Experiences” session (Moscone West, Room 2003).  This must see session will showcase customer speakers from The Boeing Company and Fideltronik, each of whom will share their company’s experiences in selecting and implementing Fusion SCM applications. If you’re wondering how Fusion SCM applications can co-exist with your existing Oracle applications, then you’ll want to sit in on the 3:30 pm session entitled “Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management: Coexistence with Other Oracle Applications” (Moscone West, Room 2003). Stick around until 5:00 pm for the final Fusion SCM session of the day entitled “Responsive Fulfillment with Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management” (Moscone West, Room 2001).  This session will showcase Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration and Oracle Fusion Global Order Promising and how they are changing the way companies manage order fulfillment in environments. In addition to discussing the current business challenges, product capabilities, value propositions, industry applicability, and future roadmap this session will also feature a customer presenter from The Boeing Company. Thursday, October 4 If you are a retail customer we highly recommend that you attend the final Fusion SCM session of the week at 12:45 pm, entitled “Multichannel Fulfillment Excellence in the Direct-to-Consumer Market” (Moscone West, Room 2024).  Retailers will learn how they can transform their supply chains to meet the ever-increasing demands of buy anywhere/get anywhere cross-channel requirements with Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration and Oracle Fusion Product Hub. Throughout the week, you’ll also want to visit the Fusion SCM demo pods at the Demogrounds in Moscone West so you can see demos of these Fusion applications. Visit pod W-005 for Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration, W-008 for Fusion Inventory and Cost Management, and W-006 for Fusion Product Hub. Click here for the Demogrounds map. A reminder that you can also pre-register for these sessions to secure your spot. Visit the Schedule Builder to pre-enroll for these sessions. Finally, you'll also want to check out the Fusion SCM FocusOn document which includes additional keynote and general sessions that you may want to attend throughout the week.   We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco next week.

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  • How to Set Up Your Enterprise Social Organization?

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    By Mike Stiles on Dec 04, 2012 The rush for business organizations to establish, grow, and adopt social was driven out of necessity and inevitability. The result, however, was a sudden, booming social presence creating touch points with customers, partners and influencers, but without any corporate social organization or structure in place to effectively manage it. Even today, many business leaders remain uncertain as to how to corral this social media thing so that it makes sense for their enterprise. Imagine their panic when they hear one of the most beneficial approaches to corporate use of social involves giving up at least some hierarchical control and empowering employees to publicly engage customers. And beyond that, they should also be empowered, regardless of their corporate status, to engage and collaborate internally, spurring “off the grid” innovation. An HBR blog points out that traditionally, enterprise organizations function from the top down, and employees work end-to-end, structured around business processes. But the social enterprise opens up structures that up to now have not exactly been embraced by turf-protecting executives and managers. The blog asks, “What if leaders could create a future where customers, associates and suppliers are no longer seen as objects in the system but as valued sources of innovation, ideas and energy?” What if indeed? The social enterprise activates internal resources without the usual obsession with position. It is the dawn of mass collaboration. That does not, however, mean this mass collaboration has to lead to uncontrolled chaos. In an extended interview with Oracle, Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang and Oracle SVP Reggie Bradford paint a complete picture of today’s social enterprise, including internal organizational structures Altimeter Group has seen emerge. One sign of a mature social enterprise is the establishing of a social Center of Excellence (CoE), which serves as a hub for high-level social strategy, training and education, research, measurement and accountability, and vendor selection. This CoE is led by a corporate Social Strategist, most likely from a Marketing or Corporate Communications background. Reporting to them are the Community Managers, the front lines of customer interaction and engagement; business unit liaisons that coordinate the enterprise; and social media campaign/product managers, social analysts, and developers. With content rising as the defining factor for social success, Altimeter also sees a Content Strategist position emerging. Across the enterprise, Altimeter has seen 5 organizational patterns. Watching the video will give you the pros and cons of each. Decentralized - Anyone can do anything at any time on any social channel. Centralized – One central groups controls all social communication for the company. Hub and Spoke – A centralized group, but business units can operate their own social under the hub’s guidance and execution. Most enterprises are using this model. Dandelion – Each business unit develops their own social strategy & staff, has its own ability to deploy, and its own ability to engage under the central policies of the CoE. Honeycomb – Every employee can do social, but as opposed to the decentralized model, it’s coordinated and monitored on one platform. The average enterprise has a whopping 178 social accounts, nearly ¼ of which are usually semi-idle and need to be scrapped. The last thing any C-suite needs is to cope with fragmented technologies, solutions and platforms. It’s neither scalable nor strategic. The prepared, effective social enterprise has a technology partner that can quickly and holistically integrate emerging platforms and technologies, such that whatever internal social command structure you’ve set up can continue efficiently executing strategy without skipping a beat. @mikestiles

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  • News you can use, PeopleTools gems at OpenWorld 2012

    - by PeopleTools Strategy
    Here are some of the sessions which may not have caught your eyes during your scheduling of events you would like to attend at this year's Open World! CON9183 PeopleSoft Technology Roadmap Jeff Robbins Mon, Oct 1 4:45 PM Moscone West, Room 3002/4 Jeff's session is always very well attended. Come to hear, and see, what's going to be delivered in the new release and get some thoughts on where PeopleTools and the industry is heading. CON9186 Delivering a Ground-Breaking User Interface with PeopleTools Matt Haavisto Steve Elcock Wed, Oct 3 3:30 PM Moscone West, Room 3009 This session will be wonderfully engaging for participants.  As part of our demonstration, audience members will be able to interact live and real-time with our demo using their smart phones and tablets as if you are users of the system. CON9188 A Great User Experience via PeopleSoft Applications Portal Matt Haavisto Jim Marion Pramod Agrawal Mon, Oct 1 12:15 PM Moscone West, Room 3009 This session covers not only the PeopleSoft Portal, but new features like Workcenters and Dashboards, and how they all work together to form the PeopleSoft ecosystem. CON9192 Implementing a PeopleSoft Maintenance Strategy with My Update Manager Mike Thompson Mike Krajicek Tue, Oct 2 1:15 PM Moscone West, Room 3009 The LCM development team will show Oracle's My Update Manager for PeopleSoft and how it drastically simplifies deciding what updates are required for your specific environment. CON9193 Understanding PeopleSoft Maintenance Tools & How They Fit Together Mike Krajicek Wed, Oct 3 10:15 AM Moscone West, Room 3002/4 Learn about the portfolio of maintenance tools including some of the latest enhancements such as Oracle's My Update Manager for PeopleSoft, Application Data Sets, and the PeopleSoft Test Framework, and see what they can do for you. CON9200 PeopleTools Product Team Panel Discussion Jeff Robbins Willie Suh Virad Gupta Ravi Shankar Mike Krajicek Wed, Oct 3 5:00 PM Moscone West, Room 3009 Attend this session to engage in an open discussion with key members of Oracle's PeopleTools senior management team. You will be able to ask questions, hear their thoughts, and gain their insight into the PeopleTools product direction. CON9205 Securing Your PeopleSoft Integration Infrastructure Greg Kelly Keith Collins Tue, Oct 2 10:15 AM Moscone West, Room 3011 This session, with the senior integration developer, will outline Oracle's best practices for securing your integration infrastructure so that you know your web services and REST services are as secure as the rest of your PeopleSoft environment. CON9210 Performance Tuning for the PeopleSoft Administrator Tim Bower David Kurtz Mon, Oct 1 10:45 AM Moscone West, Room 3009 Meet long time technical consultants with deep knowledge of system tuning, Tim Bower of the Center of Excellence and David Kurtz, author of "PeopleSoft for the Oracle DBA". System administrators new to tuning a PeopleSoft environment as well as seasoned experts will come away with new techniques that will help them improve the performance of their PeopleSoft system. CON9055 Advanced Management of Oracle PeopleSoft with Oracle Enterprise Manager Greg Kelly Milten Garia Greg Bouras Thurs Oct 4 12:45 PM Moscone West, Room 3009 This promises to be a really interesting session as Milten Garia from CSU discusses lessons learned during the implementation of Oracle's Enterprise Manager with the PeopleSoft plug-in across a multi campus environment. There are some surprising things about Solaris 10 and the Bourne shell. Some creative work by the Unix administrators so the well tried scripts and system replication processes were largely unaffected. CON8932 New Functional PeopleTools Capabilities for the Line of Business User Jeff Robbins Tues, Oct 2 5:00 PM Moscone West, Room 3007 Using PeopleTools 8.5x capabilities like: related content, embedded help, pivot grids, hover-over, and more, Jeff will discuss how these can deliver business value and innovation which will positively impact your business without the high costs associated with upgrading your PeopleSoft applications. Check out a more detailed list here. We look forward to meeting you all there!

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  • Exclusive Webcast Series Explains How Project Success Drives Business Success

    - by Melissa Centurio Lopes
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} In the wake of the global financial crisis, organizations throughout the world are redoubling their efforts to enhance financial discipline, achieve operational excellence, and mitigate risk. How can they address all these areas with one comprehensive strategy? With enterprise project portfolio management solutions that provide greater transparency and visibility across all projects and portfolios, says Guy Barlow, Oracle director of industry strategy. In the following interview and in an exclusive, three-part webcast series, Barlow examines today’s new management realities and explains how organizations can succeed in this environment. Q: Financial discipline has always been important, what’s different today? A: A number of organizations are showing that by fiscally aligning projects with the business goals of their organizations, they can shave off hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in inefficiency and waste. For example, one Oracle customer, the Columbus Regional Airport Authority, reduced its unbudgeted costs from US$24.4 million to US$3.5 million, for an 88 percent improvement. Q: How do organizations achieve results like this? A: First, they need to have the vision to see project management as part of a broad and critical element in their overall enterprise strategy. That means using a single solution, such as Oracle‘s Primavera, to manage multiple projects across multiple functions within a company. So someone in corporate mergers and acquisitions as well as a capital projects team can standardize on the same technology. By doing so they all gain greater efficiency in planning and execution—because the technology can be configured for their specific roles and needs—and the IT organization really benefits from lower maintenance. Second, enterprises must give executive leaders—CFOs, COOs, and CEOs—visibility across the entire business to easily see what projects are on track and which ones are falling behind. In fact, once executives see the power of enterprise project portfolio management, uptake is very quick across the organization. Read the full interview here.

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  • SOA Community Newsletter October 2013

    - by JuergenKress
    Dear SOA & BPM Partner Community member, Our October newsletter edition focuses on Oracle OpenWorld 2013, highlights, keynotes and all presentations. Thanks to all partners who made the conference a huge success. If you could not come to San Francisco you will find all the details within this newsletter. As the newsletter edition contains a lot of content thus we have three sections - SOA, BPM & ACM, and AppAdvantage & UX. Make sure you share your content with the community, best via twitter @soacommunity #soacommunity! What is new in SOA Suite 12c? At OOW the product management team demonstrated some of the key features of the upcoming version. The important SOA topics are mobile integration and cloud integration - make sure you re-use your existing SOA platform! Bruce Tierney showcased the Agilent mobile integration and you try the new Mobile Order Management for EBS GSE Demo using middleware technology. On cloud integration the product management team presented several OOW sessions and published two whitepapers. As SOA becomes mature the awareness for SOA Governance continues to raise, Introducing Oracle Enterprise Repository Express Workflows and watch Luis Weir: Challenges to Implementing SOA Governance. Thanks to Ronald for the SOA Made Simple | Introduction to SOA series, the next article in the Industrial SOA series is SOA and User Interfaces (UI). Have you achieved successful BPM implementation? Nominate your customer references for the Gartner Business Process Management Excellence Awards 2014. Do you want to showcase the latest BPM Suite? Make sure you use the hosted BPM PS6 (11.1.1.7) demo. Do you want to become an expert in BPM Suite? Attend one of our BPM Bootcamps in Germany, Netherland, Spain or UK! If you can not make it – we offer plenty of on-demand content Advanced BPM Scenarios & BPM Architecture Topics & Process Modeling and Life Cycle & Adaptive Case Management & Smart Application Extensibility with Oracle Process Accelerators. I would also recommend to watch great introduction to Adaptive Case Management the on-demand webcast with Bruce Silver & Ajay Khanna. Thanks to Mark Foster from the A-team for the ACM article series & Leon Smiers for their blog posts. If you accomplished a SOA Suite or BPM Suite project and want to become a certified SOA or BPM expert, we are offering again free vouchers to become a certified SOA & BPM expert (limited to partners in Europe Middle East and Africa). Don't miss this opportunity and become Specialized! Best regards, Jürgen Kress To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soaNewsOctober2013 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: newsletter,SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • BI&EPM in Focus June 2012

    - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM
    General News Thomas Kurian Discusses Oracle Exalytics, SAP HANA (replay | preso | press)  Accenture & Oracle Study: The Challenges of Corporate Financial Reporting  (link) Flash Demo: Oracle Hyperion Planning on Exalytics in the Public Sector (link) Flash Demo: OBIEE & Exalytics in Retail (link) Customers Italian Partner Alfa Sistemi implemented at Autovie Venete S.p.A. Integrates Business Intelligence and Performance Management to Improve Efficiency and Speed for Managing Public Works Projects (English version)  / Autovie Venete implementa un sistema integrato di Business Intelligence e Performance Management per migliorare l’efficienza e la tempestività dell’attività di Controlling di Commessa (Italian version). FANCL Gains 360-Degree View of Customers across Multiple Sales Channels, Reduces Reports by 75% Korea Yakult Improves Profit & Loss Analysis with Oracle Hyperion Planning and OBIEE Hill International Streamlines Forecasting, Improves Visibility into Project Productivity and Profitability Children’s Rights in Society Better Supports Organizational Mission with Advanced, Integrated, and Streamlined Business Intelligence Tools Profit: International utility Enel monitors the performance of global subsidiaries with Oracle Hyperion Applications (link) Profit: Charting a New Course: Korean Air gains altitude by leveraging its greatest asset: information (link)   Events June 12: Breaking Away from the Excel Add-In: Welcome to Hyperion Smart View 11.1.2.2 (link) June 13: Upgrading OBIEE 10g to 11g: Best Practices and Lessons Learned (performance architects) (link) June 14, The Netherlands: Strategies for Business Excellence, New Release of Oracle Hyperion EPM Suite (link) June 21: Comprehensive and Accurate Forecasting for Healthcare (link) June 26: What Exactly is Exalytics? (KPI Partners) (link) Webcast Replay: Is Your Company Able to Navigate Through Market Volatility? (link)  Webcast Replay: Is Hope and Email The Core of Your Reconciliation Process? (link) Webcast Replay: Troubleshooting EPM Reporting & Analysis 11.1.2.x  (link) Webcast Replay: Is your Organization Flying Blind when it comes to Understanding Profitability?  (link) Enterprise Performance Management Final Oracle EPM  Information Panel (CIP) survey on cost, profitability and performance reporting/scorecards is now OPEN (link) New on EPM Blog: What's Going on With IFRS? (link) How does Crystal Ball integrate with EPM Solutions? New collateral and demos on Crystal Ball Solution Factory!  (link) New Youtube Video: Business Case Analysis with Oracle Crystal Ball (link) Crystal Ball 11.1.2.2 is released! Grouped Assumptions in Sensitivity Charts, Data Filtering When Fitting Distributions and Parameter Edits When Fitting Distributions to name a few. Get full details from the online New Features Guide (link) New DRM Oracle-by-Examples now available (link) Support Blog: Hyperion Ledgerlink Sample Record and Windows 7: Now you see it, now you don’t  (link) Use Enterprise Manager FMW Control to Troubleshoot Oracle EPM 11.1.2 Family of Products (link) Business  Intelligence Whitepaper: Real-Time Operational Reporting for E-Business Suite via GoldenGate Replication to an Operational Data Store.  How Oracle enabled real-time operational reporting for its $20B services contract business with Golden Gate & OBIEE (link) KPI Partners ebook: Understanding Oracle BI Components and Repository Modeling Basics (link) “Getting Started with Oracle Endeca Information Discovery” video tutorials now available (link) Oracle BI Publisher Conversion Center: Convert from Crystal, Actuate, or Oracle Reports to Oracle BI Publisher (link) Oracle Fusion Applications: Monthly Partner Updates Webcast Replays to help BI partners understand how OBI, Essbase, BI-Apps and Fusion work together: More on Fusion CRM: Fusion Marketing More on Fusion CRM: Fusion CRM Sales Start-Up Packs and Expert Services for Implementation Partners Introducing the Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub Implementing Fusion Applications using Oracle's Composers Oracle Fusion Applications Co-Existence

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  • Do you want to be an ALM Consultant?

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Northwest Cadence is looking for our next great consultant! At Northwest Cadence, we have created a work environment that emphasizes excellence, integrity, and out-of-the-box thinking.  Our customers have high expectations (rightfully so) and we wouldn’t have it any other way!   Northwest Cadence has some of the most exciting customers I have ever worked with and even though I have only been here just over a month I have already: Provided training/consulting for 3 government departments Created and taught courseware for delivering Scrum to teams within a high profile multinational company Started presenting Microsoft's ALM Engagement Program  So if you are interested in helping companies build better software more efficiently, then.. Enquire at [email protected] Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Consultant An ALM Consultant with a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience with Application Lifecycle Management, Visual Studio (including Visual Studio Team System) and software design is needed. Must provide thought leadership on best practices for enterprise architecture, understand the Microsoft technology solution stack, and have a thorough understanding of enterprise application integration. The ALM Practice Lead will play a central role in designing and implementing the overall ALM Practice strategy, including creating, updating, and delivering ALM courseware and consultancy engagements. This person will also provide project support, deliverables, and quality solutions on Visual Studio Team System that exceed client expectations. Engagements will vary and will involve providing expert training, consulting, mentoring, formulating technical strategies and policies and acting as a “trusted advisor” to customers and internal teams. Sound sense of business and technical strategy required. Strong interpersonal skills as well as solid strategic thinking are key. The ideal candidate will be capable of envisioning the solution based on the early client requirements, communicating the vision to both technical and business stakeholders, leading teams through implementation, as well as training, mentoring, and hands-on software development. The ideal candidate will demonstrate successful use of both agile and formal software development methods, enterprise application patterns, and effective leadership on prior projects. Job Requirements Minimum Education: Bachelor’s Degree (computer science, engineering, or math preferred). Locale / Travel: The Practice Lead position requires estimated 50% travel, most of which will be in the Continental US (a valid national Passport must be maintained).  This is a full time position and will be based in the Kirkland office. Preferred Education: Master’s Degree in Information Technology or Software Engineering; Premium Microsoft Certifications on .NET (MCSD) or MCPD or relevant experience; Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) or relevant experience. Minimum Experience and Skills: 7+ years experience with business information systems integration or custom business application design and development in a professional technology consulting, corporate MIS or software development environment. Essential Duties & Responsibilities: Provide training, consulting, and mentoring to organizations on topics that include Visual Studio Team System and ALM. Create content, including labs and demonstrations, to be delivered as training classes by Northwest Cadence employees. Lead development teams through the complete ALM and/or Visual Studio Team System solution. Be able to communicate in detail how a solution will integrate into the larger technical problem space for large, complex enterprises. Define technical solution requirements. Provide guidance to the customer and project team with respect to technical feasibility, complexity, and level of effort required to deliver a custom solution. Ensure that the solution is designed, developed and deployed in accordance with the agreed upon development work plan. Create and deliver weekly status reports of training and/or consulting progress. Engagement Responsibilities: · Provide a strong desire to provide thought leadership related to technology and to help grow the business. · Work effectively and professionally with employees at all levels of a customer’s organization. · Have strong verbal and written communication skills. · Have effective presentation, organizational and planning skills. · Have effective interpersonal skills and ability to work in a team environment. Enquire at [email protected]

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  • The Latest Major Release of AutoVue is Now Available!

    - by Pam Petropoulos
    Click here to read the full press release. To learn more about AutoVue 20.2, check out the What's New in AutoVue 20.2 Datasheet AutoVue 20.2 continues to set the standard for enterprise level visualization with Augmented Business Visualization, a new paradigm which reconciles information and business data from multiple sources into a single view, providing rich and actionable visual decision-making environments. The release also includes; capabilities that enhance end-to-end approval workflow; solutions to visually enable the mobile workforce; and support for the latest manufacturing and high tech formats.     New capabilities in release 20.2 include: ·         Enhancements to the Augmented Business Visualization framework o    Creation of 2D hotspots has been extended in 2D drawings, PDF and image files and can now be defined as regional boxes, rather than just text strings o    New 3D Hotspot links in models and drawings. Parts or components of 3D models can be selected to create hotspot links. ·         Enhanced end-to-end approval workflows with digital stamping and batch stamping improvements ·         Solutions that visually enable the mobile workforce and extend enterprise visualization to mobile devices, including iPads through OVDI (Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) ·         Enhancements to AutoVue enterprise readiness: reliability and performance improvements, as well as security enhancements which adhere to Oracle’s Software Security Assurance standards ·         Timely support for new MCAD, ECAD, and Office formats ·         New 20.2 versions of AutoVue Document Print Services and Integration SDK (iSDK) ·         New Dutch language availability   The press release also contains terrific supporting quotes from AutoVue customers and partners.        “AutoVue’s stamping enhancements will greatly benefit our building permit management processes,” said Ties Kremer, Information Manager, Noordenveld Municipality, Netherlands. “The ability to batch stamp documents will speed up our approval processes, enable us to save time and money, and help us meet our regulatory compliance obligations.”          “AutoVue provides our non-technical teams in marketing and sales with access to customer order requirements and supporting CAD documents and drawings,” said James Lim, Regional Technical Systems Manager at Molex Incorporated. “AutoVue 20.2 has enabled us to refine our quotation process, and reduce order errors.”         “We are excited about our use of AutoVue’s Augmented Business Visualization framework, which will offer Meridian users enhanced access to related technical documentation,” said Edwin van Dijk, Director of Product Management, BlueCielo.  “By including AutoVue’s new regional hotspot capabilities within BlueCielo Meridian Enterprise, the context of engineering information is carried over into the visual representation of complex assets, thereby helping us to improve productivity and operational excellence.”    

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  • The Three-Legged Milk Stool - Why Oracle Fusion Incentive Compensation makes the difference!

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    During the London Olympics, we were exposed to dozens of athletes who worked with sports psychologists to maximize their performance. Executives often hire business psychologists to coach their teams to excellence. In the same vein, Fusion Incentive Compensation can be used to get people to change their sales behavior so we can make our numbers. But what about using incentive compensation solutions in a non-sales scenario to drive change? Recently, I was working an opportunity where a company was having a low user adoption rate for Salesforce.com, which was causing problems for them. I suggested they use Fusion Incentive Comp to change the reps' behavior. We tossed around the idea of tracking user adoption by creating a variable bonus for reps based on how well they forecasted revenues in the new system. Another thought was to reward the reps for how often they logged into the system or for the percentage of leads that became opportunities and turned into revenue. A new twist on a great product. Fusion CRM's Sweet Spot I'm excited about the sales performance management (SPM) tools in Fusion CRM. This trio of Incentive Compensation, Territory Management, and Quota Management sets us apart from the competition because Oracle is the only vendor that provides all three of these capabilities on a single tech stack, in a single application, and with a single look and feel. The niche vendors offer standalone territory or incentive compensation solutions, but then the customer has to custom build the other tools and can end up with a Frankenstein-type environment. On average, companies overpay sales commissions by three to eight percent. You calculate that number for a company the size of Oracle for one quarter and it makes a pretty air-tight financial case for using SPM tools to figure accurate commissions. Plus when sales reps get the right compensation, they can be out selling rather than spending precious time figuring out what they didn't get paid or looking for another job. And one more thing ... Oracle knows incentive comp. We have been a Gartner Market Scope leader in this space for the last five years. Our solution gets high marks because of its scalability and because of its interoperability with other technologies. And now that we're leading with Fusion, our incentive compensation offering includes the innovations that the Fusion team built, plus enhancements from the E-Business Suite Incentive Comp team. It's a case of making a good thing even better. (See product video.) The "Wedge" Apps In a number of accounts that I'm working on, there is a non-Oracle CRM system of record. That gives me the perfect opportunity to introduce the benefits of our SPM tools and to get the customer using Fusion. Then the door is wide open for the company to uptake more of Fusion CRM, especially since all the integrations they need are out of the box. I really believe that implementing this wedge of SPM tools is the ticket to taking market share away from other vendors. It allows us to insert ourselves in an environment where no other CRM solution in the market has the extending capabilities of Fusion. Not Just Your Usual Suspects Usually the stakeholders that I talk to for Territory Management are tightly aligned with the sales management team. When I sell the quota planning tool, I'm talking to finance people on the ERP side of the house who are measuring quotas and forecasting revenue. And then Incentive Comp is of most interest to the sales operations people, and generally these people roll up to either HR or the payroll department. I think of our Fusion SPM tools as a three-legged stool straddling an organization's Sales, Finance, and HR departments. So when you're prospecting for opportunities -- yes, people with a CRM perspective will be very interested -- but don't limit yourselves to that constituency. You might find stakeholders in accounting, revenue planning, or HR compensation teams. You just might discover, as I did at United Airlines, that the HR organization is spearheading the CRM project because incentive compensation is what they need ... and they're the ones with the budget. Jason Loh Global Solutions Manager, Fusion CRM Sales Planning Oracle Corporation

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  • Faster Trip to Innovation with Simplified Data Integration: Sabre Holdings Case Study

    - by Tanu Sood
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Author: Irem Radzik, Director of Product Marketing, Data Integration, Oracle In today’s fast-paced, competitive environment, IT teams are under pressure to deliver technology solutions for many critical business initiatives as fast as possible. When the focus is on speed, it can be easy to continue to use old style, point-to-point custom scripts that grow organically to the point where they are unmanageable and too costly to maintain. As data volumes, data sources, and end users grow, uncoordinated data integration efforts create significant inefficiencies for both IT and business users. In addition to losing IT productivity due to maintaining spaghetti architecture, data integrity becomes a concern as well. Errors caused by inconsistent, data and manual data entry can prove very costly for companies and disrupt business activities. Many industry leaders recognize now that data should be moved in an automated and reliable manner across all platforms to have one version of the truth. By simplifying their data integration architecture and standardizing on a centralized approach, IT teams now accelerate time to market. Especially, using a centralized, shared-service approach brings agility, increases IT productivity, and frees up resources for innovation. One such industry leader that simplified its data integration architecture is Sabre Holdings. Sabre Holdings provides distribution and technology solutions for the travel industry, and is a winner of Oracle Excellence Awards for Fusion Middleware in 2011 in the data integration category. I had the pleasure to host Sabre Holdings on a public webcast and discuss their data integration best practices for data warehousing. In this webcast Sabre’s Amjad Saeed, presented how the company reduced complexity by consolidating systems and standardizing development on Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate for its global data warehouse development team. With Oracle’s complete real-time data integration solution, Sabre also streamlined support and maintenance operations, achieved real-time view in the execution of the integration processes, and can manage the data warehouse and business intelligence solution performance on demand. By reducing complexity and leveraging timely market insights, the company was able to decrease time to market by 40%. You can now listen to the webcast on demand: Sabre Holdings Case Study: Accelerating Innovation using Oracle Data Integration I invite you to hear directly from Sabre how to use advanced data integration capabilities to enable accelerated innovation. To learn more about Oracle’s data integration offering you can download our free resources.

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  • SOA, Empowerment and Continuous Improvement

    - by Tanu Sood
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Rick Beers is Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware. Prior to joining Oracle, Rick held a variety of executive operational positions at Corning, Inc. and Bausch & Lomb. With a professional background that includes senior management positions in manufacturing, supply chain and information technology, Rick brings a unique set of experiences to cover the impact that technology can have on business models, processes and organizations. Rick will be hosting the IT Leader Editorial on a regular basis. I met my twin at Open World. We share backgrounds, experiences and even names. I hosted an invitation-only AppAdvantage Leadership Forum with an overcapacity 85 participants: 55 customers, 15 from the Oracle AppAdvantage team and 15 Partners. It was a lively, open and positive discussion of pace layered architectures and Oracle’s AppAdvantage approach to a unified view of Applications and Middleware. Rick Hassman from Pella was one of the customer panelists and during the pre event prep, Rick and I shared backgrounds and found that we had both been plant managers and led ERP deployments prior to leading IT itself. During the panel conversation I explored this with him, discussing the unique perspectives that this provides to CIO’s. He then hit on a point that I wasn’t able to fully appreciate until a week later. First though, some background. The week after the Forum, one of the participants emailed me with the following thoughts: “I am 150% behind this concept……but we are struggling with the concept of web services and the potential use of the Oracle Service Bus technology let alone moving into using the full SOA/BPM/BAM software to extend our JD Edwards application to both integrate and support business processes”. After thinking a bit I responded this way: While I certainly appreciate the degree of change and effort involved, perhaps I could offer the following: One of the underlying principles behind Oracle AppAdvantage is that more often than not, the choice between changing a business process and invasively customizing ERP represents a Hobson's Choice: neither is acceptable. In this case the third option, moving the process out of ERP, is the only acceptable one. Providing this choice typically requires end to end, real time interoperability across applications and/or services. This real time interoperability, to be sustainable over time requires a service oriented architecture. There's just no way around this. SOA adaptation is admittedly tough at the beginning. New skills, new technology and new headaches. But, like any radically new technology, it has a learning curve that drives cost down rather dramatically over time. Tough choices to be sure, but not entirely different than we face with every major technology cycle. Good points of course, but I felt that something was missing. The points were convincing, perhaps even a bit insightful, but they didn’t get at the heart of what Oracle AppAdvantage is focused upon: how the optimization of technology, applications, processes and relationships can change the very way that organizations operate. And then I thought back to the panel discussion with Rick Hassman at Oracle OpenWorld. Rick stressed that Continuous Improvement is a fundamental business strategy at Pella. I remember Continuous Improvement well as I suspect does everyone who was in American manufacturing during the 80’s. Pioneered by W. Edwards Deming in Japan (and still known alternatively as Kaizen), Continuous Improvement sets in place the business culture that we must not become complacent with success and resistant to the ongoing need for change. Many believe that this single handedly drove the renaissance in American manufacturing through the last two decades, which had become complacent during the 70’s and early 80’s. But what exactly does this have to do with SOA? It was Rick’s next point. He drew the connection that moving those business processes that need to continually change over time out of ERP and into edge applications and services enables continuous improvement by empowering people to continually strive for better ways of doing things rather than be being bound by workflows that cannot change. A compelling connection: that SOA, and the overall Oracle AppAdvantage framework of which it is an integral part, can empower people towards continuous improvement in business processes and as a result drive business leadership and business excellence. What better a case for technology innovation?

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  • Oracle Applications Day 2012. Experience the Global Innovation of Management Applications

    - by antonella.buonagurio
    1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} 10 ottobre 2012 – Milano, East End Studios | 17 ottobre 2012 - Roma, Officine Farneto Partecipa all’appuntamento dedicato alla comunità di Clienti e Partner per fare networking e condividere le esperienze sulle soluzioni più innovative per affrontare le sfide attuali e future. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A Milano (10/10/2012) interverranno, tra gli altri:  Enrico Ancona, Amministratore Delegato - Imperia & Monferrina e Business Reply  Massimiliano Gerli, CIO - Amplifon e Michele Paolin, Senior Manager - Deloitte eXtended Business Services A Roma (17/10/2012) interverranno, tra gli altri: Giulio Carone, CFO - Enel Green Power e Claudio Arcudi, Senior Executive - Accenture Gianluca D’Aniello, CIO - Sky e Giorgio Pitruzzello, Manager - Deloitte Consulting Spartaco Parente, EPD Change & Label Control - Abbott e Business Reply Sono inoltre previsti i contributi delle aziende Abbott, Aeroporto di Napoli, Amplifon, Dema Aerospace, Enel Green Power, Fiera Milano, Imperia & Monferrina, La Rinascente, Safilo, Sky, Spal,Technogym, Tiscali e Tivù che parleranno di: Innovation for Human Resources Performance Management Excellence Empower Applications with Technology (Milano) Applications for Public Sector (Roma) Next Generation Global Operations Customer Experience Revolution Oltre dieci Instant Workshop ti permetteranno di conoscere e condividere l’esperienza dei Partner e delle aziende che utilizzano le soluzioni Oracle.In più, oltre dieci Instant Workshop per conoscere e condividere l’esperienza dei Partner e delle aziende che utilizzano con successo le soluzioni Oracle. Iscriviti sul sito Partecipa al concorso fotografico Oracle I.M.A.G.E. e vinci il tuo iPad! Scatta le immagini che per te descrivono i cinque concept dell’evento (Innovation, Management, Applications, Global, Experience) e inviale per e-mail. Per iscriverti al contest visita la pagina Concorso sul sito Non perdere l’evento più “social cool” dell’anno!

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  • Provocative Tweets From the Dachis Social Business Summit

    - by Mike Stiles
    On June 20, all who follow social business and how social is changing how we do business and internal business structures, gathered in London for the Dachis Social Business Summit. In addition to Oracle SVP Product Development, Reggie Bradford, brands and thought leaders posed some thought-provoking ideas and figures. Here are some of the most oft-tweeted points, and our thoughts that they provoked. Tweet: The winners will be those who use data to improve performance.Thought: Everyone is dwelling on ROI. Why isn’t everyone dwelling on the opportunity to make their product or service better (as if that doesn’t have an effect on ROI)? Big data can improve you…let it. Tweet: High performance hinges on integrated teams that interact with each other.Thought: Team members may work well with each other, but does the team as a whole “get” what other teams are doing? That’s the key to an integrated, companywide workforce. (Internal social platforms can facilitate that by the way). Tweet: Performance improvements come from making the invisible visible.Thought: Many of the factors that drive customer behavior and decisions are invisible. Through social, customers are now showing us what we couldn’t see before…if we’re paying attention. Tweet: Games have continuous feedback, which is why they’re so engaging.  Apply that to business operations.Thought: You think your employees have an obligation to be 100% passionate and engaged at all times about making you richer. Think again. Like customers, they must be motivated. Visible insight that they’re advancing on their goals helps. Tweet: Who can add value to the data?  Data will tend to migrate to where it will be most effective.Thought: Not everybody needs all the data. One team will be able to make sense of, use, and add value to data that may be irrelevant to another team. Like a strategized football play, the data has to get sent to the spot on the field where it’s needed most. Tweet: The sale isn’t the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s the start of a new marketing cycle.Thought: Another reason the ROI question is fundamentally flawed. The sale is not the end of the potential return on investment. After-the-sale service and nurturing begins where the sales “victory” ends. Tweet: A dead sale is one that’s not shared.  People must be incentivized to share.Thought: Guess what, customers now know their value to you as marketers on your behalf. They’ll tell people about your product, but you’ve got to answer, “Why should I?” And you’ve got to answer it with something substantial, not lame trinkets. Tweet: Social user motivations are competition, affection, excellence and curiosity.Thought: Your followers will engage IF; they can get something for doing it, love your culture so much they want you to win, are consistently stunned at the perfection and coolness of your products, or have been stimulated enough to want to know more. Tweet: In Europe, 92% surveyed said they couldn’t care less about brands.Thought: Oh well, so much for loving you or being impressed enough with your products & service that they want you to win. We’ve got a long way to go. Tweet: A complaint is a gift.Thought: Our instinct where complaints are concerned is to a) not listen, b) dismiss the one who complains as a kook, c) make excuses, and d) reassure ourselves with internal group-think that they’re wrong and we’re right. It’s the perfect recipe for how to never, ever grow or get better. In a way, this customer cares more than you do. Tweet: 78% of consumers think peer recommendation is the best form of advertising.  Eventually, engagement is going to eat advertising.Thought: Why is peer recommendation best? Trust. If a friend tells me how great a movie was, I believe him. He has credibility with me. He’s seen it, and he could care less if I buy a ticket. He’s telling me it was awesome because he sincerely believes that it was.  That’s gold. Tweet: 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. Thought: This “how mad can we make our customers without losing them” strategy has to end. The customer experience has actual monetary value, money you’re probably leaving on the table. @mikestilesPhoto: stock.xchng

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  • Impressions and Reactions from Alliance 2012

    - by user739873
    Alliance 2012 has come to a conclusion.  What strikes me about every Alliance conference is the amazing amount of collaboration and cooperation I see across higher education in the sharing of best practices around the entire Oracle PeopleSoft software suite, not just the student information system (Oracle’s PeopleSoft Campus Solutions).  In addition to the vibrant U.S. organization, it's gratifying to see the growth in the international attendance again this year, with an EMEA HEUG organizing to complement the existing groups in the Netherlands, South Africa, and the U.K.  Their first meeting is planned for London in October, and I suspect they'll be surprised at the amount of interest and attendance. In my discussions with higher education IT and functional leadership at Alliance there were a number of instances where concern was expressed about Oracle's commitment to higher education as an industry, primarily because of a lack of perceived innovation in the applications that Oracle develops for this market. Here I think perception and reality are far apart, and I'd like to explain why I believe this to be true. First let me start with what I think drives this perception. Predominately it's in two areas. The first area is the user interface, both for students and faculty that interact with the system as "customers", and for those employees of the institution (faculty, staff, and sometimes students as well) that use the system in some kind of administrative role. Because the UI hasn't changed all that much from the PeopleSoft days, individuals perceive this as a dead product with little innovation and therefore Oracle isn't investing. The second area is around the integration of the higher education suite of applications (PeopleSoft Campus Solutions) and the rest of the Oracle software assets. Whether grown organically or acquired, there is an impressive array of middleware and other software products that could be leveraged much more significantly by the higher education applications than is currently the case today. This is also perceived as lack of investment. Let me address these two points.  First the UI.  More is being done here than ever before, and the PAG and other groups where this was discussed at Alliance 2012 were more numerous than I've seen in any past meeting. Whether it's Oracle development leveraging web services or some extremely early but very promising work leveraging the recent Endeca acquisition (see some cool examples here) there are a lot of resources aimed at this issue.  There are also some amazing prototypes being developed by our UX (user experience team) that will eventually make their way into the higher education applications realm - they had an impressive setup at Alliance.  Hopefully many of you that attended found this group. If not, the senior leader for that team Jeremy Ashley will be a significant contributor of content to our summer Industry Strategy Council meeting in Washington in June. In the area of integration with other elements of the Oracle stack, this is also an area of focus for the company and my team.  We're making this a priority especially in the areas of identity management and security, leveraging WebCenter more effectively for content, imaging, and mobility, and driving towards the ultimate objective of WebLogic Suite as our platform for SOA, links to learning management systems (SAIP), and content. There is also much work around business intelligence centering on OBI applications. But at the end of the day we get enormous value from the HEUG (higher education user group) and the various subgroups formed as a part of this community that help us align and prioritize our investments, whether it's around better integration with other Oracle products or integration with partner offerings.  It's one of the healthiest, mutually beneficial relationships between customers and an Education IT concern that exists on the globe. And I can't avoid mentioning that this kind of relationship between higher education and the corporate IT community that can truly address the problems of efficiency and effectiveness, institutional excellence (which starts with IT) and student success.  It's not (in my opinion) going to be solved through community source - cost and complexity only increase in that model and in the end higher education doesn't ultimately focus on core competencies: educating, developing, and researching.  While I agree with some of what Michael A. McRobbie wrote in his EDUCAUSE Review article (Information Technology: A View from Both Sides of the President’s Desk), I take strong issue with his assertion that the "the IT marketplace is just the opposite of long-term stability...."  Sure there has been healthy, creative destruction in the past 2-3 decades, but this has had the effect of, in the aggregate, benefiting education with greater efficiency, more innovation and increased stability as larger, more financially secure firms acquire and develop integrated solutions. Cole

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  • Why Executives Need Enterprise Project Portfolio Management: 3 Key Considerations to Drive Value Across the Organization

    - by Melissa Centurio Lopes
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";} By: Guy Barlow, Oracle Primavera Industry Strategy Director Over the last few years there has been a tremendous shift – some would say tectonic in nature – that has brought project management to the forefront of executive attention. Many factors have been driving this growing awareness, most notably, the global financial crisis, heightened regulatory environments and a need to more effectively operationalize corporate strategy. Executives in India are no exception. In fact, given the phenomenal rate of progress of the country, top of mind for all executives (whether in finance, operations, IT, etc.) is the need to build capacity, ramp-up production and ensure that the right resources are in place to capture growth opportunities. This applies across all industries from asset-intensive – like oil & gas, utilities and mining – to traditional manufacturing and the public sector, including services-based sectors such as the financial, telecom and life sciences segments are also part of the mix. However, compounding matters is a complex, interplay between projects – big and small, complex and simple – as companies expand and grow both domestically and internationally. So, having a standardized, enterprise wide solution for project portfolio management is natural. Failing to do so is akin to having two ERP systems, one to manage “large” invoices and one to manage “small” invoices. It makes no sense and provides no enterprise wide visibility. Therefore, it is imperative for executives to understand the full range of their business commitments, the benefit to the company, current performance and associated course corrections if needed. Irrespective of industry and regardless of the use case (e.g., building a power plant, launching a new financial service or developing a new automobile) company leaders need to approach the value of enterprise project portfolio management via 3 critical areas: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif";} 1. Greater Financial Discipline – Improve financial rigor and results through better governance and control is an imperative given today’s financial uncertainty and greater investment scrutiny. For example, as India plans a US$1 trillion investment in the country’s infrastructure how do companies ensure costs are managed? How do you control cash flow? Can you easily report this to stakeholders? 2. Improved Operational Excellence – Increase efficiency and reduce costs through robust collaboration and integration. Upwards of 66% of cost variances are driven by poor supplier collaboration. As you execute initiatives do you have visibility into the performance of your supply base? How are they integrated into the broader program plan? 3. Enhanced Risk Mitigation – Manage and react to uncertainty through improved transparency and contingency planning. What happens if you’re faced with a skills shortage? How do you plan and account for geo-political or weather related events? In summary, projects are not just the delivery of a product or service to a customer inside a predetermined schedule; they often form a contractual and even moral obligation to shareholders and stakeholders alike. Hence the intimate connection between executives and projects, with the latter providing executives with the platform to demonstrate that their organization has the capabilities and competencies needed to meet and, whenever possible, exceed their customer commitments. Effectively developing and operationalizing corporate strategy is the hallmark of successful executives and enterprise project and portfolio management allows them to achieve this goal. Article was first published for Manage India, an e-newsletter, PMI India.

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  • The Best BPM Journey: More Exciting Destinations with Process Accelerators

    - by Cesare Rotundo
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle Open World (OOW) earlier this month has been a great occasion to discuss with our BPM customers. It was interesting to hear definite patterns emerging from those conversations: “BPM is a journey”, “experiences to share”, “our organization now understands what BPM is”, and my favorite (with some caveats): “BPM is like wine tasting, once you start, you want to try more”. These customers have started their journey, climbed up the learning curve, and reached a vantage point that allows them to see their next BPM destination. They see the next few processes they are going to tackle and improve with BPM. These processes/destinations target both horizontal processes where BPM replaces or coordinates manual activities, and critical industry processes that the company needs to improve to compete and deliver increasing value. Each new destination generates value, allowing the organization to reduce the cost of manual processes that were not supported by apps/custom development, and increase efficiency of end-to-end processes partially covered by apps/custom dev. The question we wanted to answer is how to help organizations experience deeper success with BPM, by increasing their awareness of the potential for reaching new targets, and equipping them with the right tools. We decided that we needed to identify destinations, and plot routes to show the fastest path to those destinations. In the end we want to enable customers to reach “Process Excellence”: continuously set new targets and consistently and efficiently reach them. The result is Oracle Process Accelerators (PA), solutions built using the rich functionality in Oracle BPM Suite. PAs offers a rapidly expanding list of exciting destinations. Our launch of the latest installment of Process Accelerators at Oracle Open World includes new Industry-focused solutions such as Public Sector Incident Reporting and Financial Services Loan Origination, and improved other horizontal PAs, including Travel Request Management, Document Routing and Approval, and Internal Service Requests. Just before OOW we had extended the Oracle deployment of Travel Request Management, riding the enthusiastic response from early adopters among travelers (employees), management and support (approvers). “Getting there first” means being among the first to extract value from the PA approach, while acquiring deeper insights into the customers’ perspective. This is especially noteworthy when it comes to PAs, a set of solutions designed to be quickly deployed and iteratively improved by customers. The OOW launch has generated immediate feedback from customers, non-customers, analysts, and partners. They all confirmed that both Business and IT at organizations benefit from PAs when it comes to exploring the potential for BPM to improve their business processes. PAs help customers visualize what can be done with BPM, and PAs are made to be extended: you can see your destination, change the path to fit your needs, and deploy. We're discovering new destinations/processes that the market wants us to support, generic enough across industries and within industries. We'll keep on building sets of requirements, deliver functional design, construct solutions using Oracle BPM, and test them not only functionally but for performance, scalability, clustering, making them robust, product-quality. Delivering BPM solutions with product-grade quality is the equivalent of following a tried-and-tested path on a map. Do you know of existing destinations in your industry? If yes, we can draw a path to innovative processes together.

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  • Is software support an option for your career?

    - by Maria Sandu
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 If you have a technical background, why should you choose a career in support? We have invited Serban to answer these questions and to give us an overview of one of the biggest technical teams in Oracle Romania. He’s been with Oracle for 7 years leading the local PeopleSoft Financials & Supply Chain Support team. Back in 2013 Serban started building a new support team in Romania – Fusion HCM. His current focus is building a strong support team for Fusion HCM, latest solution for Business HR Professionals from Oracle. The solution is offered both on Premise (customer site installation) but more important as a Cloud offering – SaaS.  So, why should a technical person choose Software Support over other technical areas?  “I think it is mainly because of the high level of technical skills required to provide the best technical solutions to our customers. Oracle Software Support covers complex solutions going from Database or Middleware to a vast area of business applications (basically covering any needs that a large enterprise may have). Working with such software requires very strong skills both technical and functional for the different areas, going from Finance, Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing, Sales to other very specific business processes. Our customers are large enterprises that already have a support layer inside their organization and therefore the Oracle Technical Support Engineers are working with highly specialized staff (DBA’s, System/Application Admins, Implementation Consultants). This is a very important aspect for our engineers because they need to be highly skilled to match our customer’s specialist’s expectations”.  What’s the career path in your team? “Technical Analysts joining our teams have a clear growth path. The main focus is to become a master of the product they will support. I think one need 1 or 2 years to reach a good level of understanding the product and delivering optimal solutions because of the complexity of our products. At a later stage, engineers can choose their professional development areas based on the business needs and preferences and then further grow towards as technical expert or a management role. We have analysts that have more than 15 years of technical expertise and they still learn and grow in technical area. Important fact is, due to the expansion of the Romanian Software support center, there are various management opportunities. So, if you want to leverage your experience and if you want to have people management responsibilities Oracle Software Support is the place to be!”  Our last question to Serban was about the benefits of being part of Oracle Software Support. Here is what he said: “We believe that Oracle delivers “State of the art” Support level to our customers. This is not possible without high investment in our staff. We commit from the start to support any technical analyst that joins us (being junior or very senior) with any training needs they have for their job. We have various technical trainings as well as soft-skills trainings required for a customer facing professional to be successful in his role. Last but not least, we’re aiming to make Oracle Romania SW Support a global center of excellence which means we’re investing a lot in our employees.”  If you’re looking for a job where you can combine your strong technical skills with customer interaction Oracle Software Support is the place to be! Send us your CV at [email protected]. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • Software Architecture: Quality Attributes

    Quality is what all software engineers should strive for when building a new system or adding new functionality. Dictonary.com ambiguously defines quality as a grade of excellence. Unfortunately, quality must be defined within the context of a situation in that each engineer must extract quality attributes from a project’s requirements. Because quality is defined by project requirements the meaning of quality is constantly changing base on the project. Software architecture factors that indicate the relevance and effectiveness The relevance and effectiveness of architecture can vary based on the context in which it was conceived and the quality attributes that are required to meet. Typically when evaluating architecture for a specific system regarding relevance and effectiveness the following questions should be asked.   Architectural relevance and effectiveness questions: Does the architectural concept meet the needs of the system for which it was designed? Out of the competing architectures for a system, which one is the most suitable? If we look at the first question regarding meeting the needs of a system for which it was designed. A system that answers yes to this question must meet all of its quality goals. This means that it consistently meets or exceeds performance goals for the system. In addition, the system meets all the other required system attributers based on the systems requirements. The suitability of a system is based on several factors. In order for a project to be suitable the necessary resources must be available to complete the task. Standard Project Resources: Money Trained Staff Time Life cycle factors that affect the system and design The development life cycle used on a project can drastically affect how a system’s architecture is created as well as influence its design. In the case of using the software development life cycle (SDLC) each phase must be completed before the next can begin.  This waterfall approach does not allow for changes in a system’s architecture after that phase is completed. This can lead to major system issues when the architecture for the system is not as optimal because of missed quality attributes. This can occur when a project has poor requirements and makes misguided architectural decisions to name a few examples. Once the architectural phase is complete the concepts established in this phase must move on to the design phase that is bound to use the concepts and guidelines defined in the previous phase regardless of any missing quality attributes needed for the project. If any issues arise during this phase regarding the selected architectural concepts they cannot be corrected during the current project. This directly has an effect on the design of a system because the proper qualities required for the project where not used when the architectural concepts were approved. When this is identified nothing can be done to fix the architectural issues and system design must use the existing architectural concepts regardless of its missing quality properties because the architectural concepts for the project cannot be altered. The decisions made in the design phase then preceded to fall down to the implementation phase where the actual system is coded based on the approved architectural concepts established in the architecture phase regardless of its architectural quality. Conversely projects using more of an iterative or agile methodology to implement a system has more flexibility to correct architectural decisions based on missing quality attributes. This is due to each phase of the SDLC is executed more than once so any issues identified in architecture of a system can be corrected in the next architectural phase. Subsequently the corresponding changes will then be adjusted in the following design phase so that when the project is completed the optimal architectural and design decision are applied to the solution. Architecture factors that indicate functional suitability Systems that have function shortcomings do not have the proper functionality based on the project’s driving quality attributes. What this means in English is that the system does not live up to what is required of it by the stakeholders as identified by the missing quality attributes and requirements. One way to prevent functional shortcomings is to test the project’s architecture, design, and implementation against the project’s driving quality attributes to ensure that none of the attributes were missed in any of the phases. Another way to ensure a system has functional suitability is to certify that all its requirements are fully articulated so that there is no chance for misconceptions or misinterpretations by all stakeholders. This will help prevent any issues regarding interpreting the system requirements during the initial architectural concept phase, design phase and implementation phase. Consider the applicability of other architectural models When considering an architectural model for a project is also important to consider other alternative architectural models to ensure that the model that is selected will meet the systems required functionality and high quality attributes. Recently I can remember talking about a project that I was working on and a coworker suggested a different architectural approach that I had never considered. This new model will allow for the same functionally that is offered by the existing model but will allow for a higher quality project because it fulfills more quality attributes. It is always important to seek alternatives prior to committing to an architectural model. Factors used to identify high-risk components A high risk component can be defined as a component that fulfills 2 or more quality attributes for a system. An example of this can be seen in a web application that utilizes a remote database. One high-risk component in this system is the TCIP component because it allows for HTTP connections to handle by a web server and as well as allows for the server to also connect to a remote database server so that it can import data into the system. This component allows for the assurance of data quality attribute and the accessibility quality attribute because the system is available on the network. If for some reason the TCIP component was to fail the web application would fail on two quality attributes accessibility and data assurance in that the web site is not accessible and data cannot be update as needed. Summary As stated previously, quality is what all software engineers should strive for when building a new system or adding new functionality. The quality of a system can be directly determined by how closely it is implemented when compared to its desired quality attributes. One way to insure a higher quality system is to enforce that all project requirements are fully articulated so that no assumptions or misunderstandings can be made by any of the stakeholders. By doing this a system has a better chance of becoming a high quality system based on its quality attributes

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  • Life Technologies: Making Life Easier to Manage

    - by Michael Snow
    12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} When we’re thinking about customer engagement, we’re acutely aware of all the forces at play competing for our customer’s attention. Solutions that make life easier for our customers draw attention to themselves. We tend to engage more when there is a distinct benefit and we can take a deep breath and accept that there is hope in the world and everything isn’t designed to frustrate us and make our lives miserable. (sigh…) When products are designed to automate processes that were consuming hours of our time with no relief in sight, they deserve to be recognized. One of our recent Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award Winners in the WebCenter category, Life Technologies, has recently posted a video promoting their “award winning” solution. The Oracle Innovation Awards are part of the overall Oracle Excellence awards given to customers for innovation with Oracle products. More info here. Their award nomination included this description: Life Technologies delivered the My Life Service Portal as part of a larger Digital Hub strategy. This Portal is the first of its kind in the biotechnology service providing industry. The Portal provides access to Life Technologies cloud based service monitoring system where all customer deployed instruments can be remotely monitored and proactively repaired. The portal provides alerts from these cloud based monitoring services directly to the customer and to Life Technologies Field Engineers. The Portal provides insight into the instruments and services customers purchased for the purpose of analyzing and anticipating future customer needs and creating targeted sales and service programs. This portal not only provides benefits for Life Technologies internal sales and service teams but provides customers a central place to track all pertinent instrument information including: instrument service history instrument status and previous activities instrument performance analytics planned service visits warranty/contract information discussion forums social networks for lab management and collaboration alerts and notifications on all of the above team scheduling for instrument usage promote optional reagents required to keep instruments performing From their website The Life Technologies Instruments & Services Portal Helps You Save Time and Gain Peace of Mind Introducing the new, award-winning, free online tool that enables easier management of your instrument use and care, faster response to requests for service or service quotes, and instant sharing of key instrument and service information with your colleagues. Now – this unto itself is obviously beneficial for their customers who were previously burdened with having to do all of these tasks separately, manually and inconsistently by nature. Now – all in one place and free to their customers – a portal that ties it all together. They now have built the platform to give their customers yet another reason to do business with them – Their headline on their product page says it all: “Life is now easier to manage - All your instrument use and care in one place – the no-cost, no-hassle Instruments and Services Portal.” Of course – it’s very convenient that the company name includes “Life” and now can also promote to their clients and prospects that doing business with them is easy and their sophisticated lab equipment is easy to manage. In an industry full of PhD’s – “Easy” isn’t usually the first word that comes to mind, but Life Technologies has now tied the word to their brand in a very eloquent way. Between our work lives and family or personal lives, getting any mono-focused minutes of dedicated attention has become such a rare occurrence in our current era of multi-tasking that those moments of focus are highly prized. So – when something is done really well – so well that it becomes captivating and urges sharing impulses – I take notice and dig deeper and most of the time I discover other gems not so hidden below the surface. And then I share with those I know would enjoy and understand. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit here that the first person I shared the videos below with was my daughter. She’s in her senior year of high school in the midst of her college search. She’s passionate about her academics and has already decided that she wants to study Neuroscience in college and like her mother will be in for the long haul to a PhD eventually. In a summer science program at Smith College 2 summers ago – she sent the family famous text to me – “I just dissected a sheep’s brain – wicked cool!” – This was followed by an equally memorable text this past summer in a research mentorship in Neuroscience at UConn – “Just sliced up some rat brain. Reminded me of a deli slicer at the supermarket… sorry I forgot to call last night…” So… needless to say – I knew I had an audience that would enjoy and understand these videos below and are now being shared among her science classmates and faculty. And evidently - so does Life Technologies! They’ve done a great job on these making them fun and something that will easily be shared among their customers social networks. They’ve created a neuro-archetypal character, “Ph.Diddy” and know that their world of clients in academics, research, and other institutions would understand and enjoy the “edutainment” value in this series of videos on their YouTube channel that pokes fun at the stereotypes while also promoting their products at the same time. They use their Facebook page for additional engagement with their clients and as another venue to promote these videos. Enjoy this one as well! More to be found here: http://www.youtube.com/lifetechnologies Stay tuned to this Oracle WebCenter blog channel. Tomorrow we'll be taking a look at another winner of the Innovation Awards, LADWP - helping to keep the citizens of Los Angeles engaged with their Water and Power provider.

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