Oracle Applications: Simple, Powerful Business Systems
John Wookey explores the path ahead for Oracle Applications customers.
July 2007
Since joining Oracle in 1994, John Wookey has played a critical role in developing Oracle's applications. In 2004, when Oracle shifted its applications strategy and bought PeopleSoft, Wookey was named senior vice president of applications development and given responsibility for the entire Applications division. Under Wookey's leadership, Oracle Applications has undertaken the creation of a next-generation business applications suite, Oracle Fusion, while ensuring that customers continue to get value from their existing investments through Applications Unlimited. Profit asked Wookey about the role Oracle
E-Business Suite 12 plays in Oracle's Applications Unlimited strategy, what customers can expect in the latest version, and how the concept of an integrated suite of applications has held up over time.
PROFIT: In January, we launched new versions of all Oracle applications product lines. How does Oracle E-Business Suite 12 fit into this program?
WOOKEY: Many years ago, we had this idea that we could improve the value of enterprise applications if we built a single, integrated application suite. This single suite would improve customers' ability to manage their businesses—they could deploy a single business system across all their different lines of business, different geographies, and then they could unify business processes that span human capital management [HCM], financials, supply chain, manufacturing, CRM [customer relationship management], and other functions. We delivered on this vision with Oracle E-Business Suite, the first integrated application suite. A pretty simple idea—and like most simple ideas, extremely powerful.
As customers adopted Oracle E-Business Suite, they found all kinds of great ways they thought we could improve the application even further. And as we continued to grow our experiences with new releases, we learned new and better ways of doing things. And so Release 12 is the culmination of learnings we've had from our own and customer experiences from around the world. This really is the global Oracle E-Business Suite release: it's focused on helping a business operate more effectively on a global basis—whether that means operating in multiple countries, dealing with outsourcers and providers from abroad, or just trying to get a more global view of complete operations.
PROFIT: How does Release 12 better support global operations?
WOOKEY: We made significant improvements to the application with global business in mind. We looked at everything—how the organizational architecture works, how we manage subledger transactions, how we manage the entire accounting process, how to deploy a single inventory master that supports both discrete and process manufacturing systems. All of those changes, and many more, are about helping companies operate more effectively on a global basis.
And at the same time, we made investments to continue to expand our global footprint. We added more localizations in human resources and support for businesses wanting to operate in China by supporting Golden Tax. With Release 12 we've delivered the most compelling enterprise application suite in the market that provides tremendous value for our customers.
PROFIT: How have the acquisitions Oracle has made since the first release of Oracle E-Business Suite affected Release 12?
WOOKEY: The biggest benefit to development has been unparalleled access to the brightest minds in software. We are acquiring companies that have demonstrated leadership and innovation in their markets, and we are leveraging that experience and knowledge across the division. That means that when we acquire a company like PeopleSoft, which has the best human capital management software in the world, we can share ideas and methodologies across all teams. The latest releases of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne both benefited from access to the architects of PeopleSoft HCM. The PeopleSoft acquisition also brought us a team that had tremendous focus on user experience. As a result of that passion, Release 12 has an entirely new look and feel, which makes users more productive.
PROFIT: A big part of your focus has been customer experience. What have you done in Release 12 to ease the upgrade?
WOOKEY: We have been working on improving the quality of upgrades for many years and many releases. One process that we have adopted is to pretest the upgrade process by cloning customer instances and performing the upgrade for these customers. This way, we can closely monitor the upgrade and fine-tune the customer experience before general availability. With this release, we also ran upgrades for several of our On Demand customers to ensure that the On Demand customers can also uptake this release as quickly and easily as possible.
We've also introduced tools and technologies to improve the upgrade. One of these is a new patch wizard, which will automatically interview customers' systems and create personalized patching recommendations. By evaluating a customer's current configuration, the wizard provides recommendations that are specifically tailored to a customer's unique needs. This is the kind of innovation that I love to see at Oracle—the patch wizard provides a technology solution to a common business problem by reducing the time and effort needed to complete common system maintenance tasks like patching.
Podcast: The Latest Updates to
Oracle's Applications Strategy
John Wookey, senior vice president for Oracle Applications, speaks with Oracle Senior Vice President Cliff Godwin about the latest developments in Oracle's applications strategy. Topics include: Oracle's recent unveiling of new releases for all of its applications lines, featuring components of Oracle Fusion technology; how Oracle Application Integration Architecture—an open, standards-based platform for business process management across Oracle, third-party, and custom applications—will help customers transition to Oracle Fusion; and the path to Oracle Fusion, and how customers can prepare for it by upgrading to the newest releases of their applications.
Find this podcast and more at oracle.com/applications/podcast-fusion.html.
Applications Unlimited @ Oracle OpenWorld
With Oracle OpenWorld just around the corner,
Profit readers are already making plans for travel to San Francisco. To get a glimpse of this year's hot topics, visit Profit Online for the Oracle OpenWorld Special Report. The agenda for the November 11—15 show will include
Applications Unlimited. Get regular updates about developments to all of Oracle's application product lines.
Getting to Fusion. Practical advice about the steps you need to take to adopt Oracle's next-generation enterprise applications platform.
Oracle Database 11g. Find out how the latest version of Oracle's flagship product will deliver better business performance, management, and results.
Industry insight. Oracle experts know how your business operates. Learn how Oracle's industry investments will improve the results on your shop floor.
Visit oracle.com/profit/features/oow_specialreport.html for an ongoing preview of Oracle OpenWorld.
For More Information
Oracle E-Business Suite 12
Oracle Application Integration Architecture
Siebel CRM On Demand
Oracle Financials Centralized Solution Set
Advisor Webcasts on OracleMetaLink
Oracle WebCenter
Oracle Human Capital Management
