How to prepare for Fusion Applications

Recently I had a discussion with some participants of the OBUG on how to prepare for Fusion Applications. Their views were that it is still more technology driven and from an Applications perspective they should not be involved at the moment.

It’s true that momentarily the focus from Oracle is on the SOA suite and other more technical components. Still it’s my opinion that as a customer or a system integrator you already should start preparing for Fusion Applications.

The Applications community today consists of functional and technical consultants. The latter focuses on realizing customizations, interfacing etc and the functional consultants deal with fit/gap analysis, user training, functional specification etc. If I look at the Applications community in the future, a SOA driven world, I see an expanding playing field with different players. This world consists of:

• Processes/BPM with ARIS/BPA tooling
• Integration with BPEL
• Services with Java
• On the sideline, but nonetheless important are IDM, MDM, Data Hubs etc.

I also see different players (consultants) entering the Applications arena. Knowledge on BPM, BPEL or Java is much broader available. It’s not the exclusive terrain of the Applications consultants. For me it’s not clear how the mapping from functional and technical on the above mentioned area’s will be, but it’s my believe that in the coming years the type of work and the tools used will change.

That’s why I have started the so called Tour de Fusion program. The main purpose of the program is to create ‘awareness’ on new techniques and functionality of Fusion Applications. My consultants will receive information on the current and future developments of Oracle Fusion. They will be able to put the Oracle Fusion developments in a broader perspective.

The development of Oracle Fusion focuses on several areas. The architecture / middleware of Fusion start to become clear. Over Fusion Applications is at the moment limited information available. Therefore the program focuses in the beginning on several aspects of the architecture / middleware:

• Overview Oracle Fusion Architecture (OFA);
• SOA, Service Oriented Architecture;
• BPEL, Business Process Execution Language;
• BPM, Business Process Management;

The program consists of workshops (internal/external), presentations and follow-up sessions. Each workshop / session will have a tangible result:

• How does LogicaCMG / Oracle put it into practice (working experience);
• Whitepapers;
• Best Practices;
• Tools;
• Etc.

As the Tour de Fusion covers awareness, our skill centers will be involved in in-depth research and development on several subjects to obtain hands-on experience. For example to develop integration between E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft processes by using BPEL. For such an R&D activity a separate mini-project will be launched with a specific assignment, timeline and result. The results will be presented in the Tour de Fusion sessions.

 Viewed 12462 times by 2713 visitors

Posted by: Domien Bolmers (7 post(s)).

After my education (HTS - Informatica) I started my IT career in 1983 with Van Ommeren. After working for Shell and Management Share I joined CMG in 1993. I have held various positions in our Financial Services division. Currently I'm the Oracle Applications manager within Logica Netherlands. My team consists of both functional en technical consultants. We focus on PeopleSoft HCM, eBusiness Suite and Siebel CRM.