A vendor, or a supplier, is a supply chain management term that means anyone who provides goods or services to a company or individuals i.e. WEB ERA Company is the vendor for panacea ERP software.
According to the 2013 UK ERP selection guide, we will need to assess the vendors who are most appropriate to our organization and what size of resources, geographic coverage and breadth of product rage we expect them to have.
OSA03 Pourquoi choisir IBM pour vos projets BPM ?Nicolas Desachy
Les solutions et les services BPM proposés par IBM contribuent à optimiser les performances métier grâce à des fonctionnalités destinées à identifier, documenter, automatiser et améliorer en continu les processus. Découvrez dans cette session pourquoi des clients avec des applications Oracle ont préféré le middleware IBM pour leurs projets.
A vendor, or a supplier, is a supply chain management term that means anyone who provides goods or services to a company or individuals i.e. WEB ERA Company is the vendor for panacea ERP software.
According to the 2013 UK ERP selection guide, we will need to assess the vendors who are most appropriate to our organization and what size of resources, geographic coverage and breadth of product rage we expect them to have.
OSA03 Pourquoi choisir IBM pour vos projets BPM ?Nicolas Desachy
Les solutions et les services BPM proposés par IBM contribuent à optimiser les performances métier grâce à des fonctionnalités destinées à identifier, documenter, automatiser et améliorer en continu les processus. Découvrez dans cette session pourquoi des clients avec des applications Oracle ont préféré le middleware IBM pour leurs projets.
A complete sample process flow for Oracle Incentive Compensation for a real world customer. The compensation data was an external source and some customizations were done.
#IBMInsight session presentation "Orchestrating a Customer-Activated Supply Chain"
Assembling the pieces of a customer-activated supply chain involves activities on three dimensions: Sharpen visibility and insight, Partner for innovation, Become customer-activated
IBM supply chain analytics solutions to leverage Big Data
More at ibm.biz/BdEPRX
Joint Presentation Panasonic and IBM at TU-Automotive Japan 2016 ( http://www.tu-auto.com/japan/ ):
- Understand how machine learning across multiple industry domains creates a new mobility experience
- Explore a coherent framework combining embedded, edge and cloud-computing elements to better predict vehicle and driver needs
Digitalizing the Automotive Customer Relationship – Changing Dynamics in Cus...Jong-Seo Thomas Kim
IBP Insight:
Digitalizing the Automotive Customer Relationship – Changing Dynamics in Customer Communication
Im Bord Display wird dem Fahrer des Wagens eine Nachricht angezeigt:
„Sehr geehrter Herr Müller, die Wettervorhersagen für die nächste Woche sagen Frost an. Wir empfehlen den Wechsel auf Winterreifen. Ihr Autohändler Schmidt bietet Ihnen das Reifenwechsel-Komplettpaket für 60 Euro inkl. Auto-Wintercheck an. Bestätigen Sie diese Nachricht mit „OK“, um direkt telefonisch mit dem Autohändler zur Terminvereinbarung verbunden zu werden.“
Das Beispiel zeigt: Die digitalisierte Welt und Big Data eröffnen den Automobilherstellern und ihren Händlern eine Vielzahl neuer Möglichkeiten, um in einem kontinuierlichen Dialog mit ihren Kunden zu treten. Datenquellen wie das Connected Car oder Webportale zur Verwaltung des eigenen Fahrzeugs ermöglichen es, dem Kunden zielgerichtete Angebote zu machen. Traditionell war das Kundenbeziehungsmanagement fest bei den Autohändlern verankert. Hersteller waren zwar unterstützend durch Kommunikationsvorlagen oder die Analyse von Kundendaten involviert, sie hatten allerdings wenig Transparenz hinsichtlich der konkreten Kundeninteraktion. Die Kommunikation war weitestgehend standardisiert und ausgelegt für eine große Masse an Kunden auf festgelegten Zeitpunkten.
Neue Datenquellen wie Connected Car, Webportalen oder Social Media werden weitestgehend zentral von den Herstellern verwaltet. Um deren volles Potenzial nutzen zu können, müssen sie mit den Kundendaten beim Händler verknüpft werden. Nur so ist eine gezielte und maßgeschneiderte Kontaktaufnahme möglich.
Dabei gilt es jedoch, Herausforderungen zu überwinden. Automobilhersteller und Händler müssen enger zusammenarbeiten, um die Kundeninformationen an zentraler Stelle zu sammeln, sie zu analysieren und so eine ganzheitliche Kundenkommunikation zu schaffen. Zudem müssen auch die Kunden einen klaren Mehrwert in der Kommunikation sehen, um ihr Einverständnis für die Nutzung und Verknüpfung ihrer persönlichen Daten zu einem 360-Grad-Kundenprofil zu geben.
Die Experten der Unternehmensberatung Iskander Business Partner besitzen jahrelange Expertise im Bereich Customer Relationship Management (CRM) und haben die Chancen und Risiken eines digitalen Kundenbeziehungsmanagements im Automobilbereich analysiert. Wie werden Hersteller und Händler in der Zukunft mit den Kunden in Kontakt treten? Welche Voraussetzungen müssen erfüllt werden? Und wie müssen Hersteller und Händler zusammenarbeiten?
The Science of Predictive Maintenance: IBM's Predictive Analytics SolutionSenturus
Overview of IBM’s Predictive Maintenance and Quality (PMQ) solution. View the webinar video recording and download this deck: http://www.senturus.com/resources/science-predictive-maintenance/.
We show you the PMQ solution can keep manufacturing processes, infrastructure and field equipment running to maximize use and performance, while minimizing costs.
We show how you can use powerful analytics and data integration to help: Anticipate asset maintenance and product quality problems, Reduce unscheduled asset downtime, Spend less time solving production machinery and field asset problems, Improve asset productivity and process quality, Monitor how assets are performing in real-time and predict what will happen next.
Senturus, a business analytics consulting firm, has a resource library with hundreds of free recorded webinars, trainings, demos and unbiased product reviews. Take a look and share them with your colleagues and friends: http://www.senturus.com/resources/.
Future directives in erp, erp and internet, critical success and failure factorsVarun Luthra
This ppt explains Future Directives in ERP, ERP and Internet, its critical success and failure factors, Hit 'Like' button if the ppt turns out to be useful for you in any way. Enjoy :)
Open source ERP is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software application whose source code is made publicly available. The open source model allows companies to access the ERP system's code and customize it using their own IT department or paying extra for professional implementation partner customization and maintenance services.
An ariel view is taken here to highlight some of the critical aspects of adopting an open sourced ERP application by a medium sized organization.
Phases of ERP Implementation Lifecycle By ControlERPCalvin Hewitt
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is IT software that combine business activities across an enterprise. ERP implementation service is not a technical job, planning & communication is essential to implement ERP across the organization. For more details, Visit: http://www.controlerp.com/implementation
Steps recommended ascertaining the success of ERP implementation6e Technologies
The implementation of the ERP in an organization is a massive step towards achieving the organizational objectives with a systematic and careful approach. It is a major change that ensures better success rate by involving various components of business and integrating them with the help of software.
A detailed presentation related to ERP Systems in Oracle. It is very popular for any firm/organization to work in their platform and solve the business work and provide solution. Software development processes helps to built software using Agile models.
A complete guide of Oracle ERP System. It is the most advanced system of current market scenario. A brief written content with the help of researchers, scientists and engineers. Oracle is targeting the current ERP market and increasing their productivity and providing a better solution for Organizations to improve there business.
The Eight Building Blocks of Enterprise Application ArchitectureTechAhead
Enterprises use multiple applications and sometimes they make a mess. Enterprise application architecture is a tool to bring semblance of order in this chaos
Are you considering upgrading your ERP system? Organisations of all sizes are increasingly dependent on ERP solutions to manage their business. For many enterprises the diversity and complexity of the application landscape continues to grow and evolve in order to meet new challenges. Competitiveness is closely linked to the ability to adopt new technologies, interact more efficiently with business partners and reduce costs. All of these business drivers are enabled to some extent by ERP solutions and, as many organisations will previously have invested significantly in ERP, the notion of upgrading or extending the footprint of existing systems is worth consideration.
This white paper, 'Upgrading your ERP Systems' examines the drivers to upgrade, budgeting for an upgrade, the upgrade project including upgrade steps, project team, testing strategy, risk management, issue resolution and change control.
Pros & cons in house software vs outsourcedCeline George
Both in house ERP development and Outsourcing have their own advantages and disadvantages in store. Cautious thought must be taken by the general business population
Operating a payables shared service organization in oracle cloud oow 2019_v4Mahesh Vallampati
One of the key benefits of Oracle Cloud ERP is the shared services feature of Oracle Payables to different Business Units. This enables centralized processing, control and audit ofthe Payables function. This presentation will talk to such an implementation and how Oracle Cloud enables it.
Ever wondered how you could format the Oracle Standard reports to meet your requirements. No worries. It is easy. Oracle ERP makes it easy with BI Publisher to extend the output of standard reports to flat excel templates so you can do excel based analysis on ERP data. You could even make your format the default output format or output both standard and the extended format. We will use the SubLedger Account Analysis Report and the Fixed Asset Reserve Ledger report as use cases and do a tutorial on how to format the output. This capability improves productivity and empowers the end user to focus on analyzing the data instead of formatting it.
1099 compliance can be quite stressful during the beginning of the year. Oracle Cloud Payables makes it really easy to do 1099 processing. We will discuss the whole lifecycle of 1099 processing from setup to printing the form and mailing it to the supplier and filing the e-file with the IRS. 1099 processing will be the least of your worries on 1099 cloud payables and we will show how. We will discuss 1099 withholding, reporting, making non-AP Adjustments to 1099 amounts using the functionality.
Oracle Cloud ERP enable banking integration much more easily. This can be utilized to achieve productivity and this presentation explains several implementation concepts
The Data Architect role is one of the most misunderstood roles in Information Technology. The role is usually done in parts by several members in IT. DBA's, Application Architects and Developers perform this role in some fashion or the other. But having a single resource or team own this role brings tremendous advantages in standardization, compliance, documentation and performance.
Software development lifecycle (SDLC) has traditionally been used for in-house systems
or custom-developed software. Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) has been
used specifically in software engineering to demonstrate the maturity of an organization's
software development process. Implementations of packaged enterprise software bring a
unique set of challenges that need to be viewed from the different perspectives of SDLC
and CMMI. This presentation demonstrates how ERP managers can articulate their
development and support process within the context of SDLC and CMMI.
XBRL reporting is becoming a norm rather than an exception for a lot of companies. This document introduces XBRL, how it is enabled and works in 11i and R12 and how it can be viewed. This standardized powerful reporting option is a must-know for all users supporting financial users.
This is a presentation that describes how Oracle uses histograms to make decisions on SQL query execution. To see the actual webinar and demo, go https://portal.hotsos.com/events/webinars/
This paper describes how the optimizer uses statistics and determines plans for executing SQL statement. It explains how the 10053 trace file can be used to understand Oracle's decisions on execution plans.
This paper describes the evolution of the Plan table and DBMSX_PLAN in 11g and some of the features that can be used to troubelshoot SQL performance effectively and efficiently.
This is a paper I wrote at Hotsos where we used Method-R and Trace Data to optimize performance. SQL tuning can be simple if you ask the right questions.
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor TurskyiFwdays
I have heard many times that architecture is not important for the front-end. Also, many times I have seen how developers implement features on the front-end just following the standard rules for a framework and think that this is enough to successfully launch the project, and then the project fails. How to prevent this and what approach to choose? I have launched dozens of complex projects and during the talk we will analyze which approaches have worked for me and which have not.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI support
Zen Of Oracle Erp
1. The Zen of Oracle ERP
Introduction:
Oracle Applications is an enterprise wide business process enabling software.
This software comprises more than 30 modules which when deployed provides the
information technology infrastructure necessary to run an enterprise. A typical Oracle
Applications software has some enterprise specific customization when deployed. The
application software system is expected to fulfill the multi-dimensional requirement of
functionality, customizability, reliability and performance. Installation, customization
and deployment of Oracle applications is by no means a trivial task. This paper will
provide a generic framework to accomplish the deployment of Oracle Applications.
Objectives of an Oracle Applications Implementation:
At a very high level, the objectives of an Oracle Applications implementation can
be stated as follows:
1. Install the Oracle Applications suite with all the desired modules to be implemented.
2. Maximize the use of available functionality within the application by modifying
business process whenever efficient.
3. Customize the Oracle Application suite for business processes that cannot be
modified keeping in mind that customizations impact the ability to upgrade and
support by the vendor.
4. Deploy the applications and be able to meet business, performance and operational
requirements.
The following steps suggested should reduce the risk of implementing Oracle
Applications to a great extent.
2. ERP Implementations and Consulting Firms:
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Implementations have tremendous impact on
the way companies do business and compete. So it is a standard practice to bring in
consulting/accounting firms to advise on implementing ERP. Almost every major IT
Consulting firm has an ERP Implementation division. These firms provide a high level
of functional and technical expertise needed to deploy ERP solutions. Oracle Consulting
is a premier provider of such services and so are some major accounting firms. ERP
Implementations are treated as projects and implemented as such. Typically a Program
Office is setup which is comprised of management from accounting, IT and the
consulting firm and this office is responsible for the success of the ERP system.
Identifying the Oracle Applications Manager:
The Oracle suite of Applications needs to be administered and managed by
a highly competent person who has experience implementing ERP solutions. This person
would have extensive knowledge of Operating Systems, Oracle RDBMS’s and Oracle
Application Administration expertise. This person would be a hybrid of a Operating
System Administrator, Oracle DBA and Applications System Operation expert. This is a
very important role and could be done by a team which works in close cooperation. Most
often this person would be required to be proficient in General Ledger(GL) because the
GL is the core of the Oracle Applications suite and a correct setup of this application is
critical for success of the applications. Setup of other applications like Accounts
Receivables (AR) and Accounts Payables (AP) depend on this application too. Note that
this role is totally different from the Project manager. This team should be involved in
the decision making process of the implementation. A representative from this group
should be a part of the Program office which manages the ERP Implementation effort.
3. Methodology Implementation:
The Oracle Applications Implementation Methodology referred to as AIM
is a sophisticated Applications Implementation tool with a lot of guidelines. AIM
provides a framework for efficiently planning, conducting and managing an Applications
Implementation project. Oracle’s Application Implementation Method is a proven
approach for implementing packaged applications.
Since Application implementation projects are mission critical, it becomes
imperative that a methodology be chosen. Ad-hoc development will only lead to failures
and disappointments. AIM provides templates, guidelines, definitions, processes and
their associated tasks, resource needs to conduct an Application implementation project.
The fundamental issues is one has to select a methodology and stick to it for conducting a
mission critical effort such as an application implementation.
Business Processes and Mapping to Application Modules:
We had already mentioned before that ERP applications enable and
improve business processes. So one of the first tasks is to identify business processes and
application modules and see whether the modules implement these processes.
Historically organizations have been reluctant to change business processes and they are
stuck with applications that have outlived their usefulness.
Business Process re-engineering works two ways. One is the actual
improvement of the business process itself and the other is the modification of the
process to fit the application process flow. Organizations embrace the former for obvious
reasons, but there is a reluctance to do the latter. Actually doing the latter might reap
more benefits because of enhanced automation with just the cost of the applications rather
than expensive customizations which have disadvantages listed in this document.
4. Big Bang Approach Versus Phased Approach:
Big bang implementations offer many benefits such as enhanced
automation and features. Oracle Applications is a big bang product with all its modules
and its tight integration. It may seem intuitive that big bang products could be
implemented in a big bang fashion. The issue is that the complexity becomes a product
of the complexity of all the customization of the modules in the application. It should be
observed that the Oracle Applications assumes a hypothetical enterprise with a generic
business model. Most often, enterprises fit in the model. Whenever, there is a
discrepancy customization is done.
Some Application vendors suggest that the specific enterprise model be
modified to fit the generic model. By doing this, few customizations need to be done and
implementation of the applications reduces to an install of the applications. In fact, some
enterprises have taken this approach due to the geometric costs of implementation of all
the modules of the application.
Another widely used model is to implement modules in phases. The first
modules to go live are typically General Ledger, Accounts Payable and Accounts
Receivable, because fundamentally all companies unlike individuals are required to keep
track of paying, receiving and keeping books of transactions. A major disadvantage of
this approach is that one has to write data interfaces from other applications which have
yet to be implemented. The big bang obviates this requirement.
Big Bang application implementation efforts should flow from the top
management and should just not be an IT initiative. There must be unconditional support
from the business process owners of the various processes and a commitment made to
improve business processes by implementing the applications module. It might be even
worthwhile to conduct BPR studies on business processes and establish the business and
cost benefits of such application efforts. For example, a payables department could
5. lower its operating costs by making payable schedules for vendors accessible by Internet
and hence reduce manpower used for taking calls and accessing the information.
Selection of the Oracle Applications Release:
The first step in the Oracle Applications process is to select a version of
the applications. There are four major components to this.
1. Hardware Platform.
2. Supported Operating System for the Hardware Platform.
3. Supported Oracle RDBMS release for the Operating System.
4. Supported Oracle Applications release for the Oracle RDBMS.
This is referred to as the certified combination release of the Oracle
applications. It is very important that a certified combination be chosen at the earliest.
This in turn leads to the first problem of choosing a hardware platform. It is a major risk
to run an uncertified combination due to obvious reasons like lack of support for such
implementations. This is by far the simplest and most important step in the application
implementation process. The importance of the DEMO database in the selection of the
applications release is documented in another section. It is very important that a release
of the applications be picked at the earliest and stick with it for the duration of the
implementation.
Choosing a Hardware Platform:
Typically, Organizations have preferred vendors. The first step is to verify
whether these vendors have the latest release of Oracle and its Applications (i.e. a
certified combination) ported to their Operating System. The next step is to identify
whether such a hardware resource will be able to meet the demands of the applications
and its usage. This is where a initial capacity planning study will be very valuable. At
this point, it is hoped that a decision has been made on the modules to be implemented.
6. Since these modules are already around in various forms like Mainframe applications,
custom applications a lot of useful information can be gained from these system like
volumetrics, number of users and expected response time. This will be the input for the
initial capacity study.
By far the most critical factor in selecting the hardware platform is the
scalability of the CPU’s in the hardware. Oracle Applications can be characterized into
two types of usage - batch and OLTP. The batch usage is CPU bound in that it uses a lot
of CPU time. The OLTP is less CPU intensive. The number of CPU’s determine
scalability. But merely adding CPU’s to a hardware configuration doesn’t necessarily
buy scalability. The sophistication of the Operating System is another factor for
determining that. It can be observed that in a typical hardware platform, after a certain
number of CPU’s the performance does not improve at all. A good way to do this is to
characterize the expected workload and volumes and ask vendors to furnish reference
sites which support it. Major hardware vendor sales are centered around such application
servers and this will be a good starting point.
Oracle Consulting Services provides performance planning services and it is
strongly recommended that these services be used in the initial phase of the project to do
capacity and architecture planning
Installation of the Oracle Applications:
The Oracle Applications suite is a massive piece of software. It is strongly
recommended that Oracle’s consulting services be requested to install this software the
first time. Installation of the Applications requires versatile expertise in UNIX or the
Underlying O/S, Oracle and DBA activities. The installation of the software is an
intellectual exercise and should be learnt by one of the site personnel for future installs.
The typical installation takes a couple of days depending on the Operating System, Oracle
7. RDBMS and the Applications release. The installation process consists of installing the
software and applying the patches to complete the installation.
Availability of Oracle Applications Demo Database:
The Oracle Applications bundle consists of a Global demo database and a
couple of other demo databases. The demo database is basically an Applications database
representing a small sample set of data for a hypothetical enterprise. This database is
very important for set-up activities, and doing basic proof of concepts.
In fact, one of the first step in Applications implementation is setting up
two copies of the database along with the applications. One copy of the demo database
and the applications is for the applications lookup, setup work and for base functionality
reference. The other copy of the applications and the demo database could be used as a
starting point for application development. In fact, one of the factors for choosing a
version of the Applications is the availability of the demo database. The demo database
is typically available with all versions of the applications, but in new versions and
releases might lag the availability of a release or a version by a couple of months. It is
strongly recommended that the demo database be used as a starting point for all
application efforts.
Data Conversion:
Since Oracle Applications enable better business processes, these
processes already exist in some form around the enterprise, typically a mainframe
application, custom application or even another application vendor software. Most often
than not, these systems become the data source for the new application software.
Sometime the source for the existing applications should be identified as well so that
those original data sources could be directly fed into Oracle Applications.
8. By far one of the most intensive efforts in Applications implementation is
data conversion and its associated tasks. This process is the most important process in
the applications implementation process. A variety of templates exist in the AIM
methodology which will enable better data conversion procedures. A significant amount
of effort should be involved in automating the data conversion procedures as these
conversion processes might be a critical path for enabling various business processes.
Strap-on, Strap off Customization concept:
As mentioned before, the Oracle Applications suite is typically
customized for enterprises. These customizations should be done in such a way that a
script applies the customization and there is also a script which undoes the customization.
The reason for this is that the upgrades are designed for the base release of the
Applications and not for the enterprise specific customizations. This concept has the
advantage that a well documented strap-off, strap-on code will give the enterprise an idea
of the effort and the steps which were taken to do the customizations. Most often than
not, customizations are done in an ad-hoc fashion and at the end of the implementation,
the upgrade path for the applications is pretty much out of the question. This creates a lot
of problems because Application versions typically run out of support agreements after a
period of time and the customer is left with an unsupported combination. New Versions
of the applications enable new technologies and functionality’s and this advantage is lost
by not having such a script.
However, this is easier said than done. This is because sometimes user
requirements may require significant customizations that it might not be possible to do
this task. At this point, the user should be made aware of the risk of significant
customization which comes with a cost.
9. About the Author:
Mahesh Vallampati is a senior consultant with the Oracle National
Telecom Practice. He has 4 years experience implementing Oracle Databases and 2 years
implementing Oracle Applications. He holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering
from Texas A&M University.