As an active member of the JD Edwards community, I always try to stay connected to innovations in and around the JDE product. I also like to keep a finger on the pulse of where Oracle is headed and how those trends might impact JD Edwards. There’s no better place to keep an eye on what Oracle is up to than their annual OpenWorld conference.
This year’s OpenWorld conference met once again at its traditional Moscone Conference Center location in downtown San Francisco. Here are a few highlights from the conference:
JD Edwards News
The JD Edwards General Session, led by Lyle Ekdahl, closely mirrored the message from last month’s keynote at InFocus16. JD Edwards continues to build their business and product around the following concepts:
- Increased awareness of the benefits of EnterpriseOne 9.2
- Solutions that enable digital transformation (IoT, Mobile, Cloud)
- The concept of ‘citizen developer,’ particularly their new UX One product
Specifically, Lyle commemorated the one-year anniversary of the release of EnterpriseOne 9.2. He spoke about how 9.2 was engineered specifically to provide value in 3 key areas:
- Provide transformative “SMART” (Strategic, Mobile, and Real Time) solutions
- Offer “deep and differentiated” industry-specific solutions
- Allow for multiple delivery and deployment options
Lyle also highlighted two upgrade success stories, showcasing customers who had completed the upgrade in just 8 weeks, and another customer who had completed a net new installation of 9.2 without any customization.
The Oracle JD Edwards team also unveiled new search capabilities that are now available as a new page in EnterpriseOne 9.2. This new functionality provides Google-like search capabilities within your JD Edwards database.
Update on Oracle’s Cloud Strategy
Oracle founder Larry Ellison highlighted that cloud usage is growing by 20% year over year. Make no mistake, there was a singular message at OpenWorld, and that message was “cloud.” However, I did hear Oracle concede and acknowledge that hybrid environments are not only a viable solution for companies, but can also be viewed as a strategic component of a company’s overall IT strategy. If you’ve been around Oracle for the past few years, this is a subtle but significant shift in messaging. Oracle is encouraging customers to embrace the cloud as an enabling technology that will allow them to extend, innovate, and augment their business to create competitive advantages. Oracle touted the fact that they are the only cloud provider to deliver end to end solutions in the cloud, with options for IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
Appreciation Event
Oracle’s famed Customer Appreciation event was held at AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. The ballpark was just a short 15-minute walk from the convention center and offered a scenic view of the bay area. The guest performers for this year’s appreciation event were Sting and Gwen Stefani. Both artists gave incredible performances, and, as always, Oracle spared no expense on the event. I was particularly happy to see Sting play some of his old songs from The Police. And let me tell you, at 65 years old, Sting still has it. He’s still hitting all of those high notes, and continuing to put on a great show! ROXAAAAAANNE!
