Over the last week, the Internet has been burning up with the news that John Wookey, Oracle’s senior vice president in charge of all applications, is leaving the company. While Oracle is making no official statements about the departure, sources close to the company are saying that Wookey has stepped down from his post and will leave the company early next year after a transitional period. That leaves us with a number of questions about what Wookey’s departure could mean for Oracle’s Fusion Application strategy and its other application products.
What We Know
According to various sources, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison released an internal memo early last week in which he announced an executive reorganization. The memo announced Wookey’s departure and said that Thomas Kurian, senior VP for the Fusion Middleware group, is now in charge of Fusion Applications as well. Kurian will report to Chuck Rozwat, Oracle’s executive VP, who is now in charge of all Oracle products. The memo also noted that Ed Abbo, the executive in charge of all Applications Unlimited products (including JD Edwards), will now report to Rozwat instead of Wookey.
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We are on the verge of the season that fills us all with a combination of anticipation, delight, and a little dread. Am I speaking of Christmas? Of course not! I’m talking about the days when we apply year-end updates to our JD Edwards applications. That’s right, folks…it is time to start planning our downloads of updates so that we can run our year-end financial documents.
Oracle has just posted its release schedule for this year’s downloadable updates. Here is what we have in store:
- World updates for W-2s — November 2007
- World updates for 1099s and T4s — November 2007
- EnterpriseOne updates for W-2s and T4s — November 2007
- EnterpriseOne updates for 1099s — December 2007
As usual, Oracle will post the updates on the Oracle/PeopleSoft Customer Connection web site. Once you enter the site via your userid and password, just click on Updates and Fixes, then on EnterpriseOne and World Update Center.
This Tuesday, Oracle’s Accelerate initiative—the software giant’s program to tailor its applications to the needs of midsize companies—got a boost in its fortunes from three events. First, more than a dozen Oracle business partners unveiled Accelerate solutions for several industries, including many offerings based on JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Second, Hewlett-Packard announced hardware reference configurations for Accelerate applications that are based on EnterpriseOne and E-Business Suite. Third, Andrews Consulting Group (ahem…that’s us) released a report that examines Accelerate and concludes that it has significant potential to make Oracle a mid-market application leader. If you want to go straight to the report to read our assessment, you can get it now from our white papers section.
As you may remember from my last article about Accelerate, Oracle gained greater visibility among midsize companies back in August when 25 of its business partners announced Accelerate applications. This week, Oracle got another lift when 13 of its partners announced 16 additional Accelerate applications. The sweet thing about those applications (at least for our community) is that half of them are based on EnterpriseOne. Here’s a complete roster of the EnterpriseOne offerings; the vendors with asterisks after their names announced their offerings this week.
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So here I am sitting in front of my computer, with a cold Pepsi at my side, again placing pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as it were) to offer up another bit of insight into the vagaries of how EnterpriseOne works.
Let’s dive right in, shall we? The issue at hand is, while using the Enterprise Report Writer (otherwise known as ERW, or RDA for you old schoolers like me) the message, “The GBSPEC file is missing. Would you like to create a new one?” hits the screen and stops you dead in your tracks.
Now if you’re like me, at this point you normally would groan and use some creative phrasing to describe your feelings for the machine in front of you. Don’t be shy; it’s OK to admit you’ve done it. I have too. But let’s be honest about a few things. It’s really not the computer’s fault (though I like to blame it anyway just to make myself feel better). Chances are it’s something that was done in the not so distant past that caused you to get this message and it may be something you don’t even realize.
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Last week, a U.S. District Court judge laid out the ground rules for Oracle’s lawsuit against SAP over the alleged theft of Oracle’s intellectual property by SAP’s TomorrowNow division. Those rules are sure to annoy both companies, as neither of them got everything that they wanted from Judge Jenkins.
If I were to pick one company that is more annoyed at Jenkins’ decisions, I would have to pick Oracle. Earlier this year, the software giant told the court that it needed at least 80 depositions and an 18-month discovery period before the trial could start. That would have put the trial clear out into September 2009. In response, SAP argued for only 20 depositions and a trial that would begin as early as September 30, 2008. Jenkins sided with SAP on the number of depositions by limiting them to 20 per side. As for the trial date, he split the difference between the two companies by setting it at February 9, 2009.
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