At the upcoming NEOAUG meeting in Worcester on June 11, our Vice President of Professional Services, Mike Miller, will be presenting a paper about the impact upgrading to Oracle R12 will have on your customizations.
If you have started looking into upgrading your Oracle E-Business Suite to Release 12, you are probably aware that there are some pretty significant changes in the Financial modules and within the General Ledger.
What items do you have to consider when you’re planning an upgrade?
- All RICE and CEMLI components
- File system objects
- Database objects
- Reporting tools
- Alerts
- Workflows
- Templates
- Forms
That list may sound overwhelming to you, but if you choose to ignore any of these components you will be looking at elongated upgrade timelines and quality issues.
Attend Mike’s presentation to learn some tips and possible solutions you can utilize to make the upgrade process more smooth and ensure that you are not losing any important customizations. Additionally, Mike will talk about the cost of inaction and some tools that can help make this process easier for your organization.
View the lineup or register for the event in Worcester.
Data Intensity will be attending and exhibiting at 2 Oracle Applications User Groups meetings this month -
Chicago and New York City.
North Central Oracle Applications User Group (NCOAUG)
When: Friday, March 9, 2012
Where:Drury Lane Conference Center
100 Drury Lane
Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois 60181
Our Vice President of Professional Services, Mike Miller, will be presenting "How to Grow an E-Business Suite Developer" from 2:50pm - 3:30pm.
Attend this presentation to learn how (and how long it might take) to turn a developer who is knowledgeable about Oracle technology into an Oracle E-Business Suite developer.
We will review reading lists and the need for a different mindset when working with packaged (off the shelf) software. We will then discuss the EBS technical concepts and skill sets that are necessary to master. Finally, we will layout how these concepts and skills could be sequentially mastered in just a few weeks.
We will also be exhitibing at this event which runs from 8:30am - 4:00pm.
Learn more on the North Central Oracle Applications User Group website.
New York City Metro Oracle Applications User Group (OAUGNYC)
When: Friday, March 16, 2012
Where: Crowne Plaza Secaucus-Meadowlands
2 Harmon Plaza
Secaucus, NJ 07094
We will be exhibiting at the event which runs from 8:00am - 3:30pm.
More about this event:
The spring 2012 meeting of The New York City Metro Oracle Applications User Group (OAUGNYC) will be another joint event with OHUG, the Oracle Human Capital Management Users Group, the NY/NJ PeopleSoft and JD Edwards Users Group and the NJOUG technical user group. The number of E-Business Suite-specific breakout sessions will double compared to the last meeting. The agenda will also include sessions applicable to all product lines and a new technical track, as well as an Oracle "hot topic" keynote. This should be a "not to be missed" event for EBS customers and both their functional and technical staff!
We hope to see you at one (or both) of these events!
Many of you will be happy to know that the Extended Support fees for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12.0 have been waived.
These fee waivers cover the entire three-year Extended Support periods for both of these releases:
-
Oracle EBS 11i Extended Support from November 1, 2010 to November 30, 2013
-
Oracle EBS 12.0 Extended Support from February 1, 2012 - January 31, 2015
Customers with an active Oracle Premier Support for Software contract will automatically be entitled to Extended Support coverage for EBS 11i and 12.0.
Also, don't forget that EBS 12.1 Extended Support Fees are waived for the first year.
Read more on Oracle's Blog and please don't hesitate to contact us at Data Intensity if you have questions about how this may or may not change your plans (and budget) for upgrading to Oracle Release 12.
Join us for an hour-long webinar where we explore testing for the Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle E-Business Suite testing is vital to the stability and success of your implementation.
If you’re thinking about upgrading to Oracle Release 12, or have recently upgraded, this is a must-attend webinar.
Agenda
- Changes in Oracle Release 12
- Types of testing and testing approaches
- How to test for Release 12?
- Data Intensity’s Oracle Application Customization Scanner and Testing Center Services
- Performance Testing
- Testing after the upgrade
Who should attend?
- IT executives
- Financial executives
- IT Procurement/Purchasing executives
- Database managers
- Administrators and DBA's
Event Details:
Date: Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST
With Data Intensity’s cloud services, our customers gain access to reliable and scalable computing environments with a flexible consumption-based model. By delivering seamless provisioning of dynamically scalable and virtualized computing resources, we enable organizations to meet the peak demands of their businesses without permanent investment in infrastructure and resources.
Data Intensity customers are able to enjoy the same benefits offered by a public cloud while maintaining the control and security that businesses require to run their Tier 1 ERP systems.
You can utilize the cloud for any of the following and Data Intensity will support your needs.
• Capacity-on-demand
• Proof of Concepts (POC’s)
• Instances on demand for upgrade, development or migration activities
Service Aspects of our Enterprise Cloud Services:
- ​Rapid scalability with the power and reliability of dedicated resources
- Flexible consumption-based pricing model
- Built in disaster recovery
- Increased velocity with automated provisioning
- Mixed deployment models:
- Platform-as-a-Service
- Infrastructure-as-a-Service
- Software-as-a-Service
- Multiple Virtualization technologies
All of our cloud services are backed by best practices, word-class operational processes and Service Level Agreements.
You can learn more about our Enterprise Cloud Services on our website.
There are many different implementations and applications of cloud technologies in the industry today. At its core, cloud computing is a marketing term for technologies that provide computation, software, data access, and storage services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services. A parallel to this concept can be drawn with the electricity grid, wherein end-users consume power without needing to understand the component devices or infrastructure required to provide the service.
At the foundation of the cloud is server virtualization, which allows the provider to flexibly multiplex resources among customers without needing to dedicate physical resources. The question becomes, is this safe for mission-critical ERP environments that require predictable performance along with security, access control, and strict governance?
The answer in my opinion is no. The public cloud in its truest form does not provide the security and performance guarantees required for mission critical applications such as manufacturing, service, payroll, etc. In a public cloud there is usually an over-allocation of computing capacity with no dedicated resources guaranteed to any one tenant. This model introduces the possibility of conflict between the tenants of the cloud as one can steal capacity from another to address high processing events. This can create unpredictability with respect to performance. In addition, the lack of geographical awareness of your data, and inadequate access control, introduces security risks and data privacy issues.
Our cloud solution, which we refer to as our virtual private cloud, leverages the inherent benefits of the cloud (ease of deployment, economics, scalability, flexibility) and adds the security and dedicated computing capacity of traditional IT environments. We wrap this with best-practices and service level agreements, to provide our customers with flexible computing environments, in a pay-as-you-use model, with predictable performance and uptime.
Learn more about Data Intensity's Enterprise Cloud Services on our website.
Establishing Customizations, commonly referred to as Configurations, Extensions, Modifications, Localizations and Integrations (CEMLIs) are what makes each Oracle E-Business Suite implementation unique. Without any type of automation your upgrade to Release 12 is sure to be difficult.
Join us for this one hour webinar to learn how you can discover your organization’s most critical CEMLI’s, how they will be affected by the upgrade, and how much time and effort it will take to remediate your customizations.
Agenda
- Brief review of R12 funcionality
- Technical review of R12
- What are CEMLIs and how to identify them
- Approach & methodology to R12 upgrade
- Case studies of customers who have upgraded and successfully remediated their CEMLIs
- Tools Data Intensity has and/or can recommend to assist
Who Should Attend?
- Developers
- IT management
- Anyone responsible for the E-Business Suite
Did you miss our last webinar? You can still download the Advanced Change Management slides!
As we previously mentioned, we have partnered with Quest Software to offer Stat as part of our service delivery method.
In our blog post this past September, Application Change Management for Oracle E-Business Suite, we also mentioned that the need for automated/consolidated change management and reporting has been particularly acute as the majority of our customers are considering Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 upgrades or re-implementations.
In this great whitepaper from Quest Software, you can learn more about how Stat for E-Business Suite saves you time and expense when upgrading to Oracle R12.
Find out how Stat helps with upgrades via these specific components:
- Issue Tracking
- Workflow
- Version Control
- Migration Management
- Patching and Impact Analysis
- Auditing and Reporting
Also, did you miss our Webinar on November 16 on Advanced Change Management?
Download the slides now!
Audits and audit requests are often regarded as necessary evils meant to satisfy the demands of the client base or a regulatory edict. However, requests that are generated as a result of an audit can also lead to opportunities for a company to exhibit consistency in operational process and to demonstrate continuous improvement.
Audit requests – whether they come from a customer or from the company’s accounting firm – should always prompt companies to think about the way business is conducted:
- Is the way that we are currently performing an activity as efficient as it could be?
- Are our current processes scalable?
- What recent technology changes have occurred that we can be leverage?
The operational environment is always in flux as it tries to keep in step with industry trends, technological advances, and customer demands. If the answers to the questions above are not optimal, an audit request can provide just what is needed to give organizations the final push to implement a policy that might otherwise linger.
A preponderance of similar requests regarding an operational process may signal a trending audit requirement in the industry. By acknowledging these requests, versus simply turning them aside, you may be giving your company an advantage over your competitors – and something that your Sales team will be able to sell.
Audit requests can also be used to hold your organization accountable. Without controls and processes that support them, day-to-day work activities have no repeatability, no consistency, and no predictability. Consequently, managing operational processes can become a virtual nightmare.
Quarterly audits help to ensure that the organization is executing at high levels on a regular basis, and to gain insight into areas that may be veering off track. Early intervention and the continual testing of controls help to ensure successful audit results, as well as high performance on an ongoing basis.
Finally, audits allow the organization to take a look a back and acknowledge forward progress over the last 6-12 months. Companies can become so entrenched in the day-to-day operations that they forget about the positive contributions they are making towards bolstering the business as a whole. Reviews of controls, typically in advance of yearly accounting audits, allows team members to “take credit” for what they’ve accomplished. Just as in the movie, What About Bob, “it’s the baby steps that add up over time.”
So, when it’s “that time again,” try to remember that the audit process is an opportunity to advance the organization, give credit, and acknowledge accomplishments of the past year.
Hopefully we sparked your interest with our post last month on Advanced Change Management for the Oracle E-Business Suite. We're taking things a step further and providing additional information to you through a free webinar on November 16, 2011.
Establishing easily replicated processes around application change is a must to effectively manage business critical applications. Customers are asking for:
- Assistance with compliance & security (FDA, SOX, PCI, HIPAA, ISO)
- Enhanced change management (Automation options, Release 12 upgrades)
- Oracle E-Business Suite CEMLI management
- Support for custom, third-party and Oracle Edge Applications
- Version control and reporting
- Join us for this hour long webinar to find out how Data Intensity and Quest Stat can help your organization manage change in the Oracle E-Business Suite.
Agenda
- Why Quest Stat services?
- About Quest Stat
- Version Control
- Patch Management
- Release & Migration Management
- Auditing, Reporting and Security
Who should attend?
- Anyone interested in governance, audit and security with the Oracle E-Business Suite. This might include:
- IT Managers
- Risk/Security/Compliance/Audit officers
- Developers
- Anyone responsible for SOX, HIPPA, PCI or FDA certifications.