The JD Edwards Advisor

Next week over a thousand of the JD Edwards faithful will gather in Orlando for Collaborate joined by many more from the PeopleSoft and Oracle database communities along with vendors and others that support and sell to us.  From what we hear registrations are down modestly from last year in Las Vegas, but not as much as we would have thought given the state of the economy.  With luck, we will not all be walking through the expo hall wearing anti-swine flu masks.

In the past Charles Phillips has used his keynote at Collaborate to introduce major new initiatives such as Application Integration Architecture.  This year we expect that his major theme will revolve around Oracle’s big push in Business Intelligence.  There is a chance that the Sun acquisition will pre-empt BI as the big news item.  Our best guess is that Phillips will comment briefly on the situation with Sun but stifle discussion saying that the deal is not yet official and therefore cannot be explained yet in detail.

World customers will be cheered with happy news as release 9.2 will be featured in numerous sessions and demos.  We hear that representatives from two customers will be present to talk it up.  The Advisor will provide more input on this front if we get it before Collaborate starts.

Those of you with an interest in BI (and Oracle is going to say that should be all of you) might want to sign up for a talk by my associate Bill McGinnis on Wednesday morning at 8:30AM in room 308B on The Business Case for Business Intelligence.  This non-technical presentation will help you understand why Oracle, IBM and other major vendors are all now saying that Business Intelligence is the next big thing in IT.

Those wanting to understand BI and data warehousing at a more detailed level will want to hear Joe Guerra on Wednesday at 9:45AM in room 310A presenting Making Business Intelligence Work Best.  For the past three straight Collaborate conferences Joe’s presentations have been to standing room only audiences so get there early to get a good seat.

Please come look us up at either of our booths in the expo hall.  We are always looking for fellow JD Edwards advocates to share gossip with.  Suggestions for subjects to cover in The Advisor will be most welcome.  Our larger booth will be dedicated to RapidDecision, a BI and data warehousing offering.  The nearby smaller booth will focus on RapidReconciler, a badly needed software tool for bringing your JD Edwards Inventory and GL systems into balance.

Our condolences if you can’t make it next week.  Count on us to provide a summary of what we learn.

In the Advisor posting last week on IBM’s decision to pass on buying Sun we speculated that Oracle might pick up the pieces.  It was no big surprise (to us at least) that it actually happened! We believe that this is just act one in a drama that will change the structure of the IT industry.  The result will likely have a significant long-term impact on the JD Edwards community so we will continue to follow this story.  At the very least, it is going to provide lots of drama and entertainment.  It does not hurt that a number of very interesting characters have major roles to play.

Officially, Oracle is paying $9.50 a share in cash to buy Sun – almost exactly the amount Sun’s board turned down as too low from IBM.  Part of the appeal to Sun may be that the deal could face less government anti-trust scrutiny.  We think, however, that the main reason Sun took this offer was that key individuals preferred working for Oracle rather than IBM.

The potential benefits to Oracle are obvious – control of the evolution of Java, the ability to keep the open source mySQL from damaging Oracle’s database franchise, and ownership of the Solaris Unix variant OS.  The obvious downside for Oracle is the need to take over a declining hardware franchise with little long-term prospect for profitability.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison has vowed many times to stay out of the hardware business.  We do not believe that he had a change of heart.  One way or another, Oracle is not likely to remain in the hardware business for long.  Our best guess is that the hardware franchise will be sold off as soon as the deal gets by the regulators, most likely to HP.  If it is not sold off, Oracle may find a way to put the hardware business into “harvest” mode.  This means milking it for near term profit, cutting the sales force and R&D and then letting it quietly fade away.

Those who attended the last Oracle OpenWorld might remember that the one time Ellison broke his no hardware vow was to partner with HP to offer a high-end database appliance.  At that time Oracle reiterated that it had no interest in becoming a hardware vendor and that HP was handling that facet of the joint offering.

As most of you know, Oracle and IBM have had a surprisingly strong alliance for a number of years.  We will publish a note on this unusual arrangement in the next few weeks.  Coming on top of Oracle’s acquisition of BEA the takeover of Sun has to add some additional strain to that alliance.

Stay tuned here for lots more speculation and analysis about the meaning of Oracle’s latest move and its impact on us.  As always, your feedback is welcome.

• Implementations that came in ahead of schedule, and others that got off track and never finished.
• A fortune spent on customizations that led a few years later to the need to spend an even larger fortune un-doing them.
• Resistance to change – The Project often requires fundamental change, something few of us are really comfortable with.  Your people will fear any necessary change, and they will resist.  Underestimating the power of the resistance and not preparing your company for change are among the most common reasons for failure. 

A CPA with over twenty years of experience planning, managing, and participating in business process transformations, operations activities, and analytical and systems initiatives engagements.  These engagements typically involved JD Edwards ERP projects involving financial, distribution, manufacturing, logistics, and supply chain management integration.  I am a Senior Engagement Manager for Andrews Consulting Group currently focusing on:

·         Business Transition Planning, Improvement, and Integration through the project life cycle. 

·         ERP Packaged Software systems evaluation and selection

·         Project Planning, Implementation, Project Management, and Project Methodologies

 Please feel free to contact me by phone at 203-271-5642, or by e-mail at wtravis@andrewscg.com

By David H. Andrews

IBM ended up wasting a great deal of time and management energy looking into Sun only to have their offer rejected.  As interesting as a combination of the two companies might have been, it is probably the best thing for IBM and its customers.  Acquiring large businesses is never easy and the odds of success are historically low.  When the fit is iffy in the first place the odds drop further.

According to the real experts, the price IBM was willing to offer was not large enough to get past Sun’s board.  Apparently Sun founder Scott McNealy (a famously colorful IBM basher over the years) could not stomach the thought of having letting his creation go at a fire sale price.  Sadly, it may well have been the best option his customers and shareholders will see.

A juicy but likely unfounded Internet rumor last week had Oracle and HP bidding to break Sun into pieces that could be divided up nicely with Oracle gaining control over Java.  Something of this sort will now likely be Sun’s fate.

For JDE customers it is probably fine that IBM can now get back to work refining its already very broad product line to better meet our needs.   Even though IBM will not gain control over Java it still owes us a reasonable transition path away from OS/400 RPG to something open and sustainable.  If Sun is eventually broken into pieces IBM could still somehow increase the degree to which it acts as a leader of the Java movement.  No matter what, IBM and Oracle will continue to fight for that right.  A clear victory by one of them would make it easier for those still maintaining RPG code to decide what to do next.

As always, your comments, opinions and questions on this will be welcomed.

By David H. Andrews

Will life be worth living if the opportunity to go on an occasional junket to Vegas, Orlando or Opryland for a trade show is taken from us all in the name of cost control? Oracle gave its application customers a taste of the possible world of the future on March 11 when it tried out a new form of communication – the virtual or on-line trade show. Actually, in some respects it was actually rather cool once you accept the obvious limitations of the medium.

The subject of the event was Applications Unlimited (Oracle-speak for its application portfolio including JDE, E-business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, etc.) and the concept was to present information over the Internet in ways that mimicked a trade show.

There was the obligatory main tent, called the Auditorium, where formal Power Point presentations were offered live non-stop for almost four hours. The quality of the video I received over a cable modem at the office was excellent and the software that surrounded it was a little hokey but actually quite cool.

Not surprisingly, Oracle did not appear to know how to adapt its presentation style to this new medium. The keynote in the Auditorium was offered by Ed Abbo, the Oracle executive responsible for all applications. In person Ed comes across as smart and dynamic and a person with something to say. Here the presentation jumped back and forth between a shot of his head in front of a photo of Oracle’s offices and some traditional PowerPoint slides. Sadly, a presentation containing some very worthwhile nuggets of information and ideas was read from a script in a monotone. It is hard to picture much of the audience, living the world of multi-tasking, paying careful attention for the whole thing. Too bad.

The problem wasn’t Ed, it was Oracle’s failure to understand the new medium being used. All the presentations that we listened to followed basically the same format and were equally ineffective at establishing a real connection with the audience.

Overall, Oracle should be commended for trying something new. Sadly, I suspect that a future generation of this type of software will in the not distant future reduce the justification for all those fun filled junkets. That won’t happen until those using the medium figure out how to do so in a new and effective way. As a pioneer, Oracle could end up being one of the first to figure out how to do so.

Those that want to experience the medium that could replace trade shows sometime in the future (and learn a little from Oracle at the same time) can still do so. The recorded version of Experts Live still appears to be up and running at:

 http://www.oracle.com/dm/09q3field/28139_ev_app_unlimi_experts_mar09.html

Let us know what you think!

By David H. Andrews

IBM is rumored to have made a bid to buy Sun.  Should the JD Edwards community care?  We think so and plan to do a series of articles on this developing story.  The story is of interest first because a high percentage of JD Edwards software runs on IBM servers. Historically, JD Edwards customers have been very loyal to IBM, so most of you have an interest in what IBM does.

Sun appears to be caught in a downward spiral from which it cannot escape.  A desperate search for a suitor has led it to IBM’s door.  Rumors indicate that over $6 billion, more than twice the recent stock price, has been offered.  IBM seems to want to gain share, especially in the Unix server market where it is currently unable to make a profit.  Sun’s Solaris version of Unix and its Sparc processors bring customers and possibly valuable technology to IBM.

If the deal goes through IBM will need to decide what lives on and what fades away.  Solaris can already be run on Power processors so it seems likely that Sparc would be the hardware loser and fade away.  Only a few diehards are likely to care.  The smartest of the Sparc engineers would be used to help create future Power processors.

Over time is it hard to picture IBM fully supporting three Unix variants: AIX, Solaris and Linux.  IBM was already trying to nudge its customers toward Linux and presumably that would be the longer-term plan for Solaris users as well.

OS/400 (aka iOS) is already in IBM’s assisted living facility as it quietly fades away.  A Sun takeover would, if anything, modestly accelerate this trend as already limited resources get spread even thinner.  The push toward Linux for those running OS/400 would likely ratchet up over time.  Since all the operating systems in question will eventually run on Power, continuing to buy Power servers will likely remain a safe bet for JDE customers for now.

Individually, neither Sun nor IBM has a large enough share of the Wintel server market, including the blade sub-market, to fend off HP and Dell.  As one they might have a shot at prospering.  It is unclear which blade design would prevail but IBM always gives the losers a bridge to the future in these situations.  An acquisition would thus make it safer to make the switch to IBM blades than it now is.

The most interesting assets IBM would gain are Sun’s control over the Java development environment and the open source MySQL database management system.  If the deal goes through we can expect IBM to become much more assertive in promoting a new generation of its Eclipse based software development environment.

Most JDE shops used OS/400 RPG for development during the 1990’s and have slowly been moving toward to either Microsoft .NET or Java.  A few have kicked the tires on Oracle’s Java based develop platform as well.  A Sun takeover by IBM would likely strengthen the already strong case to move on from RPG to Java.

This story thus has significant implications for the JDE community and is thus worth watching – something we plan to do.  We will also soon be reporting on some fascinating new developments on this front that we have heard about through our own jungle telegraph system as soon as we can check them out.  Stay tuned.

By David H. Andrews

Were back! After a short period without postings we are ready to launch a new era for The JD Edwards Advisor. After acting as Editor since its inception, Lee Kroon has moved on to help grow a new business outside the IT arena. He may occasionally offer an opinion here as time passes but will not be a regular contributor. We cannot thank Lee enough for all he did for us and the JD Edwards and AS/400 / System i communities over the years.

For now, I will personally be acting as editor in addition to my duties as CEO of Andrews Consulting Group (ACG). Many others from within and outside our company will be helping to maintain the flow of useful information to the JD Edwards community. One of the first will be Wayne Travis, one of the most experienced JDE consultants and project managers at ACG. An article introducing Wayne will follow.

We are going to try a new format and style for The Advisor in 2009 partly in reaction to the glut of depressing news that assault us daily. Few of you need to hear any more bad news so we will try to revel in the positives we can find in our corner of the world while presenting the intelligence we uncover in a style that hopefully will be mildly entertaining. It will be hard to find a million laughs in the news about World and Enterprise One, but where practical we will try to present useful information in an easy to understand and interesting way.

There will be more opinion injected into the thoughts offered along with some unabashed speculation – some of it based on the thinnest of evidence. Those wanting deeply researched analysis presented in pedantic language (at a great cost) will need to turn to the traditional industry analyst firms such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC or AMR. Each of them has a firmly established place in the IT industry and we will not attempt to duplicate what any of them do.

Hopefully many of you will be inspired to contribute comments or raise issues. As long as it is of general interest to the JD Edwards community and tactfully stated we will welcome an input.