In this post:
- Oracle Fusion Applications 11G is released and available
- My initial conclusions
- Other thoughts
Disclaimer: Please note that the conclusions in this blog post are my own personal opinions.
Oracle Fusion Applications 11G is released and available
For all of you who haven’t yet noticed, Oracle Fusion Applications 11G is now available! You can get the installation from the Oracle E-Delivery site in no time. This is the moment many of us have been waiting for, if not for many years then for many months for sure. For me the media availability isn’t the most important thing – it is certainly a very important factor and I am planning to get my hands dirty with it very soon (stay tuned ;). Keeping in mind the amount of effort Oracle have invested in the product and the fact that the product is going to be a flagship ERP system on the market for at least next 10 years the most important thing is to get an access to the documentation. For me to understand the concepts and fundamental principals of the product is much more important than getting it installed ASAP ( this must be a sign of age , *sigh* ;)
My initial conclusions
I am at the very beginning of the long, long, long journey. Have just started to read “Fusion Applications Installation Guide” this week. A small warning here. All documentation available at the moment has a “Beta Draft” stamp. Therefore some things may change. However, the main principals are there and I am happy to share my first conclusions as I (as Oracle Apps DBA) draw from my reading:
- “It is different!” – This is a completely different product to anything we know today (including Oracle E-Business Suite). It isn’t EBS R12 on steroids or on a different technology stack. Somewhere in my heart I was hoping that Oracle would take EBS as a base for the new product and add some best features from the other products they currently own. Not so guys! It is completely different!
- “All is different!” – It is a very different product from bottom to top and from top to bottom. I am sure that functional folks will have their say. I will report from the technical side. It has totally different technology components, and the way the components are put together and interact is different. I’d like to point out that all schemas are not preloaded to the database (as were in EBS ) from the beginning where the products’ schemas got loaded to the database during the installation phase. I assume that the operational procedures such patching and cloning are going to be different as well. Folks! My advice to all: start unpacking your school bags now ;)
- “Migration isn’t just an Upgrade!” – This is my educated guess but I would bet that we should get prepared to properly plan data migration projects from any existing ERP systems. I don’t think that there will be an “easy” way to upgrade your current ERP system to the new product. A small price to pay for a very special and best of breed ERP system :)
Other thoughts
Just few other comments:
- I predict that there will be much confusion around the name of the product. I would like to be found wrong but based on the documentation provided it looks like Oracle will keep the name unchanged from “Oracle Fusion Applications”. I find this name a bit long with not many abbreviation options (OFA have been used for at least 2 popular Oracle concepts before: Oracle Flexible Architecture and Oracle Financial Analyzer). To call it just Fusion doesn’t make sense either.
- There are going to be confusion around the Administrators (DBAs) who will master the product technically. How these DBAs be referred to? Oracle Apps DBAs is used already and a Fusion DBA isn’t really an option either. I predict that many recruiters will be confused. They are having huge problems with the existing list of professions. Case in point, I just saw a real advertisement looking for Oracle R13 DBA position recently – really?;)
- Other bit is how to reference the product in Social Media?! Just at the time of writing I got a re-tweet from @debralilley – “RT @dbmoore: … Oracle Fusion Apps move toward … ” MAN (Sorry Debra! You are definitely the Superwoman) You are kidding me! “Oracle Fusion Apps” is (17 characters) = long name. It is way too long for 140 char limit. I will by a beer for anyone who can propose a good short abbreviation for “Oracle Fusion Applications”. Please do not hesitate to leave your suggestions for a short name best used on Twitter in this post’s comments below.
9 Comments. Leave new
I like OFApp. I think there needs to be a clearer distinction between Fusion Middleware and Fusion Apps. But then I wasn’t happy when they skipped Forms 7/8 to synchronize the App Server version numbers with the DB version numbers. At the time we were running Forms 6i on a 9i App server against an 8i database.
I would convert OFApp to OraFApps than. To avoid some misinterpretation.
How about OFusA or OFUSA?
Good try Alex. We can consider OFFAUS as well :)
I think #FMW and #FApps would be short and yet obvious, thanks for the mention
Hey Debra! More I think about #FApps more I like it :) There is a space for interpretation tho. However it all to us and Oracle Community to chose the abbreviation to use. The advantages of #FApps a) it is as short as it can get and b) it is not used for anything else. I hope the community will like it.
Is #fusionapps too long?
Thank you David for the suggestion. It is a food one. I like even shorter version #fapps :). May trigger different associations. However the name is a good one if people use it and it fulfill the purpose. Let see what community will use.
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