Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas was again home to JD Edwards users and enthusiasts for 5 action-packed days earlier this month. Each day brought with it a combination of networking, educational sessions, and—because it wouldn’t be a conference without them—cocktail hours. In what has become an annual tradition, today we wanted to share a conference recap for those who missed the show; below is a brief look at what you need to know from Collaborate 2017.
3 Takeaways for the future of JD Edwards
Perhaps the biggest moment of the conference came came Monday morning, when Lyle Ekdahl, Senior Vice President of Product Development, shared Oracle’s long-term roadmap for the JD Edwards product.
Mr. Ekdahl acknowledged the JDE community’s desire for upgrades to be less disruptive and to include a greater long-term commitment from Oracle. He went on to announce that Oracle is extending support for the EnterpriseOne 9.2 Product through “at least” 2028, which is a deviation from Oracle’s traditional 8-year support model. By extending support for 9.2 through “at least” 2028, Oracle is effectively offering a 13-year support window from 9.2’s General Availability Date in October of 2015.
So what does Oracle mean by “at least” 2028? Mr. Ekdahl went on to say that as we approach the 2028 date, Oracle will begin to review the 9.2 product support timeline on an annual basis and will make extension decisions based on the number of new products they are putting on the market along with the behavior of the JD Edwards community at large.
Moving forward, Lyle Ekdahl indicated that new product functionality will be released in the form of Feature Packs and Updates to the EnterpriseOne 9.2 code line, rather than major code line releases. For those of us anxiously awaiting an announcement of EnterpriseOne 9.3, we will have to be patient. Oracle doesn’t plan to do a new code line release unless there are major leaps in technological innovation that would make a major release necessary.
But that wasn’t the sole focus of Mr. Ekdahl’s presentation. He also dove into several exciting new features available on 9.2. Many of the sessions over the next few days then explored deeper into those features as they applied to specific industries or use cases. JD Edwards UX One User Experience was one such feature with exciting new options for users. Available in the latest version of the application are pre-built landing pages for 50 roles across 23 functional areas—each of which still remains completely customizable. Oracle’s goal with this latest release is to enable companies to accelerate adoption and lessen the IT backlog for the creation of these dashboards, which it sees as vital to helping companies achieve better decision making and receive more value from their JD Edwards system.
Ekdahl also shared a list three columns deep of features “coming soon.” This included everything from additional UX One roles to Orchestrator enhancements (such as the ability to call other orchestrations).
However, the big moment for those of us here at Surety was when he gave our annual JDE survey a shout out with a mention of a stat from this year’s results: 46% of companies consider themselves favorable to upgrade in the next 12-24 months.
Get your copy of the full 2017 JDE Survey Results Here!
Winning Big In Vegas by Networking
From the Welcome Reception to the daily cocktail hours, a big part of attending Collaborate each year is the chance to rub elbows with other JD Edwards users who can celebrate, commiserate, and spark new ideas for your JD Edwards system. Surety Systems hosted our 6th Annual JDE Leaders Reception, with a great group of industry frontrunners joining us for signature cocktails and conversation at the Border Grill.
Special congratulations to Stephanie Hatcher from Printpack for winning our Amazon Echo!
Monday and Tuesday night during Cocktail hours in the Exhibitor’s Showcase JD Edwards customers had a chance to mix it up with JDE service providers over a cold beer or a glass of wine.
The Surety Systems booth featured our digital caricature artist for the second year running, with customers able to stop by for a chat about their JD Edwards system and receive both a printed and digital copy of their personal caricature as to take home from the show.
Also available at the booth were our team koozies—each featuring the caricature of one of our JD Edwards team present at the conference, leading one customer to ask team member Kieran Wilson for her signature!
The big finale was Wednesday night’s party, which provided one last chance to see friends, old and new, before heading out of town until next year. As always, the event was a blast.
Looking Ahead: Save the Date
Collaborate 18 has officially been scheduled for April 22-26th—presumably at Mandalay Bay again. The Surety Systems team is already starting to plan for next year. We’re all looking forward to seeing everyone out there!
