Our Top Takeaways from OpenWorld 2008 — Part 2

Last week, we offered four of our top takeaways from Oracle’s OpenWorld 2008 user conference. This week, we’re back to offer more, and with a special emphasis on JD Edwards applications to boot. So join with me as we share not only what we learned from the sessions we attended, but also what we picked up from private talks with the JD Edwards team. To maintain continuity with our previous article and its four takeaways, we’ll start with…

Takeaway #5 — The EnterpriseOne and World development teams are adopting a more collaborative approach to how they enhance the two product suites. At OpenWorld sessions and casual meetings, managers and developers from both teams stated that they are working more closely with each other to roll out the same technologies on both products. In most cases, these projects involve the World team taking technologies from the EnterpriseOne team and adapting them to World’s unique architecture. A good example of such collaboration is the recently announced integration between World A9.1 and Demantra Demand Planning. This offering appeared first for EnterpriseOne 8.11 SP1 and 8.12, then was reworked for the World A9.1 environment.

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Oracle Unveils More Accelerate Offerings Based on JD Edwards

Late last month, Oracle joined with its business partners to announce dozens of new Accelerate offerings for midsize companies. Fortunately for our community, 16 of the new offerings are based on JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. The announcement brings the total number of Oracle Accelerate solutions to more than 90, including 34 offerings that run on EnterpriseOne.

In case you have not heard, Accelerate is an initiative on Oracle’s part to make it easier for midsize companies to deploy, manage, and pay for its applications. Each Accelerate offering utilizes one of Oracle’s four primary enterprise applications: E-Business Suite, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, PeopleSoft Enterprise, or Siebel. Oracle provides these products to its business partners with tools, templates, and documentation that they can use to configure the applications to the requirements of vertical industries. These same tools help reduce the time and effort required to deploy the applications to a considerable degree. Accelerate also addresses cost concerns by providing competitive per user prices and, in many cases, financial offerings that allow customers to pay for their applications over time.

 

Oracle Accelerate Gains JD Edwards Offerings and a New ACG Paper

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.

 

Oracle and its Partners Release First Flight of Accelerate Offerings

For months, Oracle has been quietly working with dozens of regional solution providers to create a portfolio of industry-focused applications for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). Three weeks ago, the software giant took the stage with 25 of those providers to announce the first fruits of their joint effort. Fortunately for JD Edwards customers, many of the new industry offerings are based on EnterpriseOne.

The announcement marks a milestone for an initiative known as Accelerate that Oracle launched in March of this year. Accelerate is Oracle’s strategy to deliver applications that are tailored to the needs of SMB organizations in more than 70 industries. Each Accelerate offering is based on the complete code base of one of Oracle’s four primary enterprise applications:  E-Business Suite, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, PeopleSoft Enterprise, or Siebel. Oracle offers these products at steep discounts to its Accelerate partners along with tools to configure the applications to vertical industry requirements. Oracle also provides tools and technologies that reduce the time, resources, and expertise needed to deploy the resulting applications.