Recent changes by Oracle in its support policy have been followed by significant feature and support changes in upcoming versions of applications in the PeopleSoft product line. In July 2009, Oracle announced the pre-release notes for PeopleTools 8.50, the foundation tool for all PeopleSoft development. The key areas and features emphasized by Oracle in PeopleTools 8.50 are:

• - Related content
• - Integration technology
• - End-user productivity
• - Supported platforms

The biggest change is in supported platforms. While earlier versions of PeopleTools had run on 32-bit machines, PeopleTools 8.50 will run only on 64-bit machines.

To give you a quick comparison of 32-bit vs. 64-bit processing:

• - 32-bit systems can reference 2 to the power of 32 addresses, or 4 GB of RAM
• - 64-bit systems can reference 2 to the power of 64 addresses, or approximately 17.2 billion GB, 16.8 million terabytes, or 16 exabytes of RAM

In essence, the 64-bit computers will be processing about ten billion times more information than their now nearly-insignificant 32-bit cousins.

What does this mean to a business? Several requirements go along with PeopleTools 8.50:

• - New 64-bit servers
• - New operating systems
• - New 64-bit support software
• - New installations or upgrades
• - Integration and support for the new equipment

Here are the answers to a couple of very obvious FAQs:

• - No, you cannot run a 64-bit emulation on a 32-bit machine.
• - Yes, you can run a 32-bit emulation on a 64-bit machine, but it’s like making an F-15 Eagle travel at the same speed as a tricycle, just to be in a tricycle race.

The majority of businesses run on 32-bit machines, and these have proven adequate, given the quantities of commercial data most organizations use (an exception would be statistical market analysis firms), and the PeopleSoft product suite does run on the 32-bit supported PeopleTools 8.49. The key for business owners considering an upgrade will be how much longer PeopleTools 8.49 will be supported.

During these tough economic times, few organizations will be willing to justify any significant additional cost without a serious look at all of the benefits – not just the speed.

No one would argue that much is turbulent in our economy today, and this turbulence certainly extends to educational institutions as well. Yet, even in more stable times, educational institutions are subject to changing enrollment trends and regulatory requirements, regardless of the economic conditions, and their leaders must maintain the institutions’ abilities to perform. In spite of cuts in budgets and resources, colleges and universities must find ways to thrive in the face of the following challenges:
- State colleges are being deluged with record numbers of student applications, while applications for private colleges are declining due to the higher tuition costs at these institutions.
- Community and specialty colleges are showing increases in the numbers of applications, due to lower costs of tuition and a workforce seeking to retool skill sets in preparation for “the next big thing.”
- Business colleges and universities continue to receive student applications from strong international candidates, despite stringent admission and immigration requirements.
- Federal student financial aid reporting requirements are changing in 2009, along with many college board, state and local reporting requirements.

To meet these challenges, educational institutions are faced with a dilemma. They must either (A) continuously modify their current Student Administration systems to address the new requirements, or (B) upgrade their current Student Administration systems to incorporate new requirements.

At the HEUG (Higher Education User Group) Alliance 2009 conference in Anaheim, California, Oracle addressed the educational challenges by stating the following commitments, relative to its PeopleSoft Campus Solutions product:
- Minimize operational disruption and the capital costs that have often been experienced with major upgrades
- Deliver Campus Solutions as a stand-alone instance
- Give customers options for HCM (Human Capital Management) integration

The release of Campus Solutions 9.0 achieves these goals by offering the following for upgrade customers:
- Campus Solutions 9.0 (CS 9.0) will be the base foundation application being supported.
- CS 9.0 will be independent of HCM 9.1 (CS 9.0 remains connected to HCM 9.0).
- Additional changes will be implemented using feature packs. A feature pack is one or more enhancements and/or one or more new features that can be applied directly to the current release, without an upgrade event.
- Campus Solutions products will be migrated to service-enabled technology over time.
- CS 9.0 includes enhancements and features that were originally targeted for CS 9.1.
- HCM 9.1 and CRM 9.1 integration are included.
- Service-enabled core product modules (Admissions, Enrollment, etc.) are included.

For those who choose the Oracle legacy path (option A), the caveats are as follows:
- If you are on Campus Solutions 8.9 or earlier, support will last only the next few years and will vary by support contract.
- Any future government-mandated changes will require software customizations.
- Maintenance to legacy systems will need to address both new requirements and modifications to old requirements.

The key benefit in the upgrade option is no further upgrade events. Anyone who has gone through an upgrade realizes the resources, expenses and time needed for such an endeavor. Limiting that impact by using service-enabled (e.g, Oracle Fusion or Java-based) modules is clearly a step in the right direction, and minimizes the impact on costs and resources.

We’ve heard it before, change is the only constant. Change comes in waves and in many forms – big, small, congenial and risky – causing you to evaluate your current state and wonder if the decisions you make will bring you to a safe harbor of continuity and growth or into a rocky reef of maintenance-laden, disparate application interfaces.

The Oracle Solutions Fair took place on January 29. As we were headlong into what was projected to be a very long-term recession, the question in both the customer’s and vendor‘s mind was: Why should I spend money or resources on Oracle products?

Mark Stevens, Vice President of Industry Strategy & Insight from Oracle, gave an excellent opening presentation, Building the Business Case for the New Technology Stack, arguing on that very subject. Several well-documented studies have made compelling arguments about the importance of making the right investment decisions during a recession (e.g., cash investments vs. cash hoarding and IT budget cuts vs.other departmental cuts).

Stevens indicated that the longer a recession lasts, the greater the post-recession growth prospects – and companies that invest during the recession are far better positioned to take advantage of that growth…a ray of hope during these dark financial times. Stevens cited Wal-Mart, Abbott Laboratories, Walgreens and Arrow Electronics as companies that are continuing to invest and execute growth strategies as we move deeper into recession, which should serve them very well when we come out on the other side.

Synch-Solutions reps attending the event looked at the following Oracle solutions:
Identity Management – a security manager to control all application security
Business Intelligence – the collected information from a data warehouse that enables informed decision-making
SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) – Web-enabled connections creating a kind of 21st-century EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)
Beehive – a collaborative software similar to the Facebook model

Any organization considering these products must answer to the question: How can these products help our business? In order to answer this question properly, the organization must first answer another question: How do we want to achieve our business goals?

In general, the application of technology as a speculative investment, rather than a strategic investment as part of a unified overall plan, produces the same results as a bad stock pick. Case in point: there are no mass-produced 5-wheeled cars out there, or GPS wedding rings!

But an investment in technology that improves a task, fulfills a goal or rolls up to a mission statement is a wise choice in any economic climate.

Most of us have heard Oracle speak of the need to develop a roadmap for our PeopleSoft products. Oracle recommends laying out a timeline or schedule that guides the transition from a PeopleTools-based product to a Fusion-based product. While I’m sure most agree this is a beneficial activity for budgeting and planning purposes, it can prove to be difficult, given that there are no guarantees with the “what, when, where and how” of the future Fusion product suite.

This past September, Oracle presented useful PeopleSoft subject matter at the OpenWorld 2008 conference in San Francisco. Much of this information could impact, or result in further refinement to, existing roadmap documents. The focus of my next few blog entries is to highlight some of the topics relevant to PeopleSoft strategic planning activities.

At the top of my list is PeopleTools 8.50, an update that could impact your 2009 IT plans. With the hype (and some confusion) surrounding the future Fusion product, it was refreshing to see a live demonstration of an enhanced PeopleTools product that brings the user interface more in line with today’s Web 2.0 standards. Oracle expects this release sometime in 2009, and given the fairly extensive demo at OpenWorld, the GA estimate appears accurate. I would recommend reviewing the presentation (and bookmarking the Oracle PeopleTools blog if you haven’t already) to better understand some of the updated capabilities with Tools 8.50.

Some features outlined in the presentation to keep in mind:

• Backward compatible: The 8.5 Tools release is backward compatible to any application running at least 8.4x. If you’re running Financials 8.9 on Tools 8.47 you can upgrade directly to 8.5. Some shops may see a better ROI by upgrading the Tools and leaving the application at the current level.

• Enriched navigation enhancements available with just the Tools upgrade:
    • Partial Page Refresh
    • Modal Lookup Prompts & Error Messages
    • New Menu, Favorites, Recent Visits
    • Homepage Pagelet Drag/Drop
    • Independent Pagelet Refresh
    • Type Ahead/Auto-Complete
    • Modal Zoom Grid for existing grids

• Connected Query – allows the developer to join PS Queries into parent-child relationships to further increase the tool’s ability as a reporting source. There will also be additional enhancements with Web services to run PS Query data to XML publisher or a third-party application.

The presentation does include new features that are dependent on additional product licensing. For example, the presentation shows a new feature that can pull business intelligence (BI) content directly into a page, based on the page’s current context. While the feature looks both sharp and useful, it requires a separate BI tool to generate the required data. Additionally, some of the features are dependent on an upgrade to 9.1 (GA estimate 2010). When reviewing these updated capabilities, make sure you differentiate what is delivered with the Tools upgrade by itself, as well as what’s available with the 9.1 application upgrade included. Regardless, the PeopleTools 8.5 release, scheduled for release in 2009, does offer compelling updates that should be analyzed against existing roadmap strategies.

There are some things you can do to protect your applications investments. See Oracle’s presentation  for a complete listing. But, I can tell you that one thing stands out. You should upgrade to the minimum release required to allow direct migration to Fusion Applications.

This means that the following releases are recommended:

1. E-Business Suite 11i.10, R12 and beyond
2. PeopleSoft Enterprise 8.8, 8.9, 9.0 and beyond
3. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.11, 8.12 and beyond
4. JD Edwards World A7.3, A8.1, A9.1 and beyond
5. Siebel 8.0 and beyond

Being on these releases will not only ensure that you are capable of upgrading to Fusion Applications in the future, but it will also enable you to take advantage of new products that are continuously being certified against these versions.

As I mentioned earlier, Oracle’s Applications Unlimited strategy complements the Fusion Applications. This means that you can conceivably stay on your current ERP platform without having to upgrade to Fusion Applications. Oracle categorizes three stages of lifetime support for Applications Unlimited. I will summarize the features and benefits of each, as described by Oracle on their site (http://www.oracle.com/support/lifetime-support-policy.html), and then explain why I do not recommend allowing your organization to remain at the third level of support.

1) Premier Support – provides you with maintenance and support of your Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle Applications for five years from their general availability date.

2) Extended Support – allows you stay competitive, with the freedom to upgrade on your own timetable. It provides you with an extra three years of support for specific Oracle releases for an additional fee. You benefit from the same quality of service you receive with Premier Support, with the security of knowing you can expand your systems when the time is right.

3) Sustaining Support – puts you in control of your upgrade strategy. With Sustaining Support, you will receive technical support for as long as you operate your systems – which includes access to Oracle’s online support tools, knowledgebases, pre-existing fixes for your solution, and assistance from technical experts.

My recommendation is not to remain in the Sustaining Support mode, because no new bugs will be accepted at this level. This negates your ability to be in control of your upgrade strategy based on business requirements, because, should a new issue arise, the standard advice will be to upgrade.

In my next entry, I will provide practical recommendations about what you should do about all of this now.

To facilitate the best of breed approach to Fusion Applications, Oracle consolidates the foundation components for each of the products in its portfolio (E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel) in the suite’s technology stack.

Oracle has been doing this in a 2-step process. At one level, it is pulling more products under the Fusion Middleware umbrella. Fusion Middleware has expanded from a Web server to a rich suite of products including Application Server, Identity management, Security, Business Intelligence and Application Integration Architecture.

At the next level, Oracle has been upgrading the technology stack of the application products in the portfolio so that as many products from the Fusion Middleware suite can be utilized as possible.

For example, XML Publisher, the reporting framework from the Fusion Middleware Suite of products, has been certified to work with PeopleSoft 8.48 and is seamlessly integrated with version 9.0. This means when customers use PeopleSoft version 9.0, they are ready for Fusion Applications.

The same approach is used for several of the products in Fusion Middleware suite, such as Single Sign-on solutions, and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (Formerly Siebel Analytics), which has been certified to work with E-Business suite.

The Fusion Applications will work on the same set of Fusion Middleware components. So you can protect your investment and reduce some upgrade-related headaches in the future by ensuring that your environment is running at least at the minimum level required to take advantage of the direct upgrade path to Fusion Applications.

In my next entry, I will discuss the available support options for Oracle Fusion.

Fusion Applications is still in the works and there is no date announced for availability. Oracle’s vision for Fusion Applications is to create an application suite that unifies best-of-business capabilities from all Oracle Applications in a complete suite. This means, for example, it could be an amalgamation of strong HR functionality from PeopleSoft paired with core Financials from E-Business Suite.

It is less clear how it will play out in practice. It could be a totally new suite of applications, apart from E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel. Another scenario is that the solution could enable you to pick and choose the modules you want to install and those modules may come from multiple, pre-existing Oracle product families. For example, in a single instance, you could select PeopleSoft HR and E-Business Suite financials with the underlying technology stack at the database and Application Server level supporting such a configuration.

Complementing the Fusion Applications is Oracle’s Applications Unlimited strategy. I’ll cover that in my next entry.

Oracle Fusion Middleware is available now. It is a loose collection of middleware infrastructure tools and components centering around Identity Management, Business Intelligence, Application Integration, Web Server, Collaboration Suite, etc. When it comes to licensing, you may have to license each one independently. A complete listing of middleware products can be found here: http://www.oracle.com/products/middleware/index.html.

If you are going to use any of these products, you should verify the certification matrix to ensure the product combination is certified. For example, Oracle 10g Application Server is not certified with 11.5.10.2 E-Business Suite. If you want to take advantage of all that 10g AS has to offer in your E-Business Suite environment, you need to upgrade your E-Business Suite environment to R12.

My next entry will be about Fusion Applications.

With its continuous spree of acquisitions and increasingly complex array of solutions, the Oracle branding strategy is not getting any easier to follow.

It’s a throwback to the time when Oracle struggled with branding the middleware platform. First it was called Web Application Server (WAS), then Internet Application Server (iAS). Finally, a longer term strategy was put into place with 9iAS and 10gAS.

Coming back to the source of the confusion with Fusion, Oracle, in all its wisdom, has chosen the same name for its Applications and Middleware suites of products. I will talk about each of them in upcoming entries, starting with Fusion Middleware.