Speculation abounded, and pundits—including yours truly—had much and varied to say when Oracle acquired PeopleSoft, along with the erstwhile JD Edwards product lines. What would Oracle do with JD Edwards World? World and its trusty System i server, bound at the operating system level, were inseparable, and this was foreign technology to UNIX giant Oracle.
It is now over a year later, and Oracle has announced support for JD Edwards World beyond 2013 in its Applications Unlimited Strategy and is on the verge of releasing World Release A9.1 within the next year. Moreover, Oracle is not making the mistake JD Edwards did initially: expecting customers to migrate from World to EnterpriseOne, which as we know, was not successful. Today, according to Oracle, 90% of JD Edwards' customers (about 3,500) remain on the World A7.3 platform, and 10% of customers are on A8.1. Now, A9.1 is touted by Oracle to include the over 1000 incremental enhancements that were part of A8.1, but which are now considered to be noninvasive and stable.
During a recent analyst teleconference, executives from IBM's System and Technology Group (STG) and Oracle briefed analysts on the JD Edwards World roadmap and the ongoing role of System i.
Oracle executive John Schiff, Vice President and General Manager, JD Edwards World, emphasized the following regarding the JD Edwards World roadmap:
- Oracle says that its JD Edwards roadmap is customer-driven. In fact, the JD Edwards team has been engaged with customers as to which "touch points," defined as processes or parts of processes, Oracle will need to develop as it incorporates Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) into future releases.
- Customers on A7.3 will be provided a straight-shot upgrade to A9.1 and to Fusion. Moreover, it will not be prerequisite to migrate to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne or Oracle E-Business Suite, according to Oracle.
- A preview of World Release A9.1 revealed to analysts that Oracle has a three-pronged approach: Operational Excellence, Technology Improvements, and Compliance Support. Operational Excellence includes service and warranty management and PC upload and download, among other new features. Technology Improvements include improvements to the upgrade process, the inclusion of SOA, and new documentation. Compliance Support includes an enhanced Approvals feature as well as Address Book enhancements, among other features.
Mark Shearer, General Manager System i, IBM STG, re-emphasized IBM's continuing commitment to Oracle JD Edwards World, and Schiff underscored System i flexibility, total cost of ownership (TCO), and protection of existing and future customer investment in JD Edwards World.
SOA: Like It or Not
For the most part, SOA is not a primary concern of most small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). In fact, many SMBs are not aware of SOA, do not care about it, and likely will not care about it until someone demonstrates what SOA will do for them. However, as Oracle is now quite firmly entrenched in the applications business and has many SMB customers, especially those running on JD Edwards World, the company has decided that rather than forcing SOA down the throats and into the pockets of SMB customers, it will inculcate elements of SOA into future product releases, including JD Edwards World. This way, Oracle will help customers modernize their applications, ultimately helping them reduce maintenance costs through componentization and reuse.
Oracle's World Release A9.1 roadmap includes some SOA, which is a component of its Fusion initiative. The company apparently is trying to offer customers alternate paths into Fusion that are more manageable versus costly and complex rip-and-replace implementations. The Approvals feature in World Release A9.1, which will be native on System i, will be SOA-enhanced. The JD Edwards Approvals feature is directly connected to particular applications in A9.1. SOA enhancement will enable World developers to plug Approvals into various applications, such as AR, Purchasing, Address Book, Vendor Master, etc. JD Edwards will begin with Address Book and then plans to plug Approvals into other business processes over time. Enhanced Approvals capabilities will allow customers to perform pool approvals and have alternative employees perform approvals. Infusing SOA into the Approvals feature essentially means that if customers need to make changes in multiple areas, they will need to do it only once.
An Old Story
What makes SOA different from object-oriented technology, which has been around for over two decades? A decade ago, Java was the next disruptive technology. And, while it has evolved significantly and is inextricably tied to the Internet boom, it has also been mainstreamed. Moreover, many recall IBM's San Francisco Project and its promise of providing developers with componentized, extensible, and reusable business process components.
In recent years, object-oriented technology has reappeared in SOA. Software vendors are developing their own—and some say proprietary—SOA technologies. Oracle Fusion and SAP Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA)/NetWeaver (among others) emphasize reusability, the ability to extend legacy systems, interoperability among unlike systems and applications, modernization, and ultimately lower cost of operation and maintenance due to efficiencies in code reduction and consolidation.
For the SMB, the promise of SOA is lofty; however, vendors such as Oracle are realizing that if SMB customers do not begin to modernize, "they will fall far behind the technology curve," says Tom Carrell, Principal Product Strategy Manager for JD Edwards World.
Oracle, then, may emerge as a sheep in wolf's clothing, attempting to modernize the capability of JD Edwards World without sacrificing stability and low total cost of ownership, operation, and maintenance. And perhaps it is the cost of maintenance that will appeal to SMB customers most.
Studies have demonstrated that many IT shops in many companies, including the SMB, spend upward of 80% or even more of their IT budgets performing maintenance and support and maintaining interfaces, versus implementing technologies to support new business processes. Those customers with heavily customized applications are loathe to even attempt to upgrade to newer releases as it is a daunting task. Eventually, SOA-enhanced applications may be the route SMBs take to remain current yet still have a stable, cost-effective, and predicable environment without having to become Java or "other"-technology experts.
Carrell also points out that the time may be ripe for SOA to take hold, even in the SMB, as a decade ago the middleware was not as mature as it is today. Oracle is using JDeveloper, which is part of the Oracle middleware suite and also Java. Moreover, Oracle's SOA "hot pluggable" components support deployment with middleware platforms that include IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, and JBoss Application Server. Carrell says that "the structure of the Web service gives [SOA] discipline...[and] a standard pipeline to use. In past, [object-oriented technology] was all over the place."
Theoretically, JD Edwards World customers can adopt some elements of Fusion while maintaining their World base. A compelling argument for Fusion is that if World customers fancy a Fusion-based consumer packaged goods (CPG) application, they would be able to drop it in while maintaining the World system underneath the covers.
The caveat here is that while Oracle is infusing its applications with Fusion and providing the touch points, it will be up to the customer or applications' vendor to the develop the orchestration among such touch points. This is still uncharted territory.
Carrell does not see SOA as "the" next killer app per se. Instead, he views killer applications as being more industry-specific. The "killer" app will be different in different industries. Moreover, SOA also offers Web Services management tools such as activity-monitoring tools. And "infrastructure is growing up as well [and] gives SOA a leg up on this class of technology."
Bottom Line
Oracle has seized on a very clever strategy to move customers to a more sophisticated world, no pun intended. Essentially, it appears that Oracle is making JD Edwards World so indispensable to customers that it would be financially imprudent to rip and replace with a competitor's product. The big question: Is Oracle giving World customers what they want? MC Systems Insight invites readers to share their views.
And what of the "prodigal customers" who abandoned JD Edwards' maintenance and support? While Oracle's sales team is likely to work with them to bring them back into the fold, customers who choose to go back onto support and maintenance are probably going to have to pay the penalty; there will likely be no amnesty.
IT decision-makers, especially those whose companies are running on JD Edwards World A7.3, will need to engage executives in other departments and explore their companies' strategic directions and examine existing business processes. While SOA is not likely to be disruptive to the SMB in the short term, it is incumbent upon IT decision-makers to begin to learn a little about what it may mean to their business environment and IT topology in the future.
Maria A. DeGiglio is President of, and Principal Analyst for, Maria A. DeGiglio & Associates, an advisory firm that provides clients with accurate and actionable information on business and technology initiatives. You can reach Ms. DeGiglio at
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