I recently joined members of Surety’s JD Edwards team at the InFocus16 conference in Denver. This annual conference is organized by the Quest User Group, and traditionally billed as a “deep dive” event geared primarily towards members of the EnterpriseOne community. Although Quest has worked to include content for World customers over the years, InFocus is definitely an E1-centric event.
Digital Transformation
Oracle’s key message at the conference was “Digital Transformation”. Wikipedia defines digital transformation as “the changes associated with the application of digital technology in all aspects of human society”. The concept of digital transformation asserts that increased use of digital technology will naturally give birth to new technological innovation and creative applications.
The Quest keynote on Tuesday morning, led by Oracle’s Dawn Baker (VP of Product Development) and Bob Monahan (VP of Product Management) discussed how JD Edwards should be the cornerstone of a company’s Digital Transformation Strategy. They outlined their concept that ERP should be viewed as the center of a company’s digital business, because ultimately most of a company’s data and processes are centralized in their core ERP system. However, Dawn reminded us that simply maintaining core ERP is not enough. In order to move at the speed of today’s digital economy, Ms. Baker asserted that companies must embrace key transforming/disruptive/enabling technologies that can accelerate the use of core ERP data within their organizations, and help them ultimately make predictive decisions. For Oracle, these enabling technologies take the following form:
- Cloud Deployment Options (Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud)
- Increased focus on UX (User Experience) and the concept of the “Citizen Developer”
- Mobile Applications offerings
- Internet of Things
Setting the Technological Bar
Surety Systems also delivered a presentation at InFocus titled: “Setting the Technological Bar” where we presented the results of our 2016 JD Edwards Survey. Along with our 2016 results, we were able to leverage 6 years of JD Edwards usage survey responses, to show trends across the JD Edwards ecosystem, and how that data can predict what we can expect to see in the next 2-3 years.
Wild West Party
The conference concluded its final evening with a Wild West Party in the exhibit hall. As always, these evening cocktail events provide an excellent opportunity for attendees to reconnect with old friends, chat about war stories, and spend valuable time interacting with vendor partners that are thriving in the JD Edwards community.
OpenWorld/Conclusion
In September, I’ll get a chance to travel out to San Francisco again for the Oracle OpenWorld conference. I’m sure that I’ll be fed a steady diet of “Cloud” while I’m out there, but it is always helpful to keep my finger on the pulse of where Oracle is moving as a business, particularly with the recent acquisition of NetSuite. For those of you who aren’t able to attend OpenWorld, I’ll chronicle my trip and keep you informed.
