Oracle ERP – Blogs

OTech Talks Lets Talk OPEN, is an initiative to bring together Industry Experts to share knowledge and information around the latest happenings in the world of technology and Oracle started during March 2015 and my primarily focus was on to build this platform in the world of Podcasting, videos and blogs

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My all blogs and Podcasts will be in OTech Talks now onward as i have handed over ownership of this portal to other community member. 

The views expressed on this portal/blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

In the beginning of 1990s new software systems were surfaced branded in the industry as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems for large complex organizations. These applications were proprietary systems and providing off-the-shelf solutions for organizations. However consultants/Vendors to tailor and implement them based on the company’s requirements. Sometime ERP Systems were pushing companies to re-engineer their business processes to accommodate the logic of the software modules for streamlining data flow throughout the organization. These ERP software solutions are integrated multi-module packages suitable for tailoring and adding “add-ons” as and when required with compare to traditional in-house-designed company specific systems.

These ERP Systems were on-premises model and then in early 2000 we have seen the influx of hosted solutions, in which the platform is managed off-site but the software must be installed on end-users computers. A third model have been hurled recently in which the ERP system is provisioned from the cloud and accessed by end-users via web browsers through internet.

To summarize the basic difference between on-premise ERP and cloud ERP is, On-premise ERP solutions are installed locally on your hardware/servers and managed by your IT Team while cloud ERP also called SaaS (Software-as-a-Service Applications) is provided as a Service. In this model, a company’s ERP software are managed centrally (in the Internet “Cloud”) by the ERP vendor like Oracle and are accessed by customers using a web browser through internet.

Oracle has launched Cloud ERP (SaaS Applications) which enable the companies to implement immediately and at a lower cost than with traditional on-premise implementations. Here I am covering Top 7 reasons to move to Oracle Cloud ERP

1. Zero cost on hardware with Cloud ERP compare to traditional on-permise e-Business Suite Implementations. We were used to buy/invest on heavy Hardware to run Oracle EBS, in case of Cloud ERP we don’t require to buy hardware, it is responsibility of the vendor to ensure what we require to access, run our Cloud ERP.

2. Zero cost on upgrades of Cloud ERP as this will be provided by Oracle free of charge to all customers and Oracle will ensure to keep upgrading to latest release of Cloud ERP Applications. In EBS we were upgrading Oracle ERP to any new release of packaged applications like from 11i to R12 and sometime this were being done by our internal IT teams or being contracted to outside vendor/consulting companies.

3. Zero cost on Infrastructure Software like Operating Systems, Backup Solutions, and Disaster Recovery Sites. In Cloud ERP this will be no longer required and it will be responsibility of Cloud Vendor – Oracle

4. No need of Oracle DBA/System Admins to maintain/work 24*7 to keep Live Oracle applications. In Oracle e-business applications, our internal DBAs were responsible to maintain Application and Database for Production, UAT, Test environment. In case of Cloud ERP, this will be reasonability of Cloud ERP vendor like Oracle

5. Say No to customization on Cloud ERP, it will help business process harmonization for cloud deployment and eliminates major customization which ultimately make ongoing maintenance easy.

6. Cloud ERP is bundled with BI compare to EBS. In Cloud ERP Financial Reporting and Analytics includes Fusion Financial Reports Center and Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) embedded analytics which provides role-based dashboards, and on-the- fly ad hoc reporting capabilities. In EBS were used to buy separate Oracle BI for analytics reporting.
7. No need to invest in performance tuning, downtime schedules, security, Disaster recovery site and apply patches. All these lies with Cloud ERP vendor Oracle. We don’t need to be worry about.

Based on my assessment and market research, upfront cost benefits can be up to 40%, with no hardware, less implementation time, less maintenance cost and reduction in Support team.

Are you planning to start career in Oracle? or Are you a professional working in Oracle Technologies? Or May be you’re looking to sharpen your knowledge of Oracle or strengthen your skills on latest technologies, announcements  of Oracle, here’s a list of Oracle Magazines and links to digital editions to add to your reading regimen. I would recommend you for a must-read magazine.

Based on my personal experience and reading these magazines form years on years I can tell you that you will get value out of these magazines. Number of renewed write like Mark Rittman, Arup Nanda, Steven Feuerstein, and Tom Kyte

Oracle Corporation is publishing following two Magazines as a FREE/Complimentary Subscription for qualified applicants. What you have to do is to simply click on following links and fill the Subscription form.

Magazine: Profit Magazine

Offered by: Oracle Corporation

Subscription Cost: Free for qualified individuals

Published: Bi-Monthly

Oracle Magazine contains technology strategy articles, sample code, tips, Oracle and partner news, how to articles for developers and DBAs, and many more information for professionals.

Oracle Technology Articles, Sample Code, Tips

Magazine: Oracle Magazine

Offered by: Oracle Corporation

Subscription Cost: Free for qualified individuals

Published: Quarterly

Oracle Profit Magazine contains business news with the tagline of Profit: Technology Powered. Business Driven. is and is widely distributed to executives, managers, and IT strategists who trust Oracle solutions to increase productivity, trim margins, improve operational efficiency, and grow the bottom line. Through personal interviews and site visits, Profit writers and editors document the hard work behind enterprise IT and the innovative ways Oracle customers are transforming their businesses

Oracle Profit Magazine cover solutions to increase productivity

After your approved subscription It can take anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks to receive your first copy of the magazine.

I have got an opportunity to present Webinar/TECHCAST arranged by IOUG EM SIG for IOUG Oracle EM SIG Techcast: Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c – How to Achieve Heights of Success. The webcast was presented Wednesday, September 10, at 12 noon CDT.

Recording to be posted this week! Click here to be taken to the Special Interest Groups (SIGs):Oracle Enterprise Manager Files.
Just copying abstract as it is published by IOUG through IOUG e-Brief

Just as the title states, this presentation shares a case study of a successful implementation of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c.

From this presentation viewers will:

• Understand the architectural enhancements of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c.
• Learn how to manage the lifecycle of Oracle Enterprise Manager components IaaS, PaaS, DBaaS and MWaaS.
• Learn how to architect and implement Oracle Enterprise Manager to optimize availability and performance.
• Learn how Oracle Enterprise Manager empowers end customers, Oracle IT administrators, and Oracle Support.

Webinar presenter Kashif Manzoor is an Oracle ACE and Project Director of Applications at Raqmiyat, LLC, a systems integrator and the primary IT division of the Al Ghurair business group based in Dubai, UAE. Recently, Manzoor spoke with IOUG E-Brief: Oracle Enterprise Manager about his company’s experience with Enterprise Manager and what he wants to convey to webinar attendees.

What do you want to convey in the webcast?
KM: The webcast will take attendees through a case study of the implementation, highlighting the top 25 tips for the backbone of an EM 12c initiative. In our experience, we initially thought Enterprise Manager would be just a database tool. But later we realized we should have thought of it as an enterprise tool from the beginning. This is one of the messages I want to pass along – treat an Enterprise Manager implementation as you would other any other application implementation you are doing in your organization.

First-rate announcement from Oracle through Steven Chan Blog for Mobile Apps strategy on Oracle eBusiness Suite.  With the rapid advent of social media and our behavior to see everything on smart phones. We as users of Oracle eBusiness suite started feeling old fashioned with the release of Oracle Fusion Applications where everything was coming for smartphones.

Finally we have got the update and new apps for Oracle Timecards, Oracle approvals. Oracle apps are being developed using Oracle Mobile Application Framework and it will be for both Apple iOS and Google Android.

Will not write more lets go directly to Steven’s blog on Mobile Apps for Oracle eBusiness Suite:

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Mobile app strategy

We’re building our family of mobile apps for the E-Business Suite using Oracle Mobile Application Framework.  This framework allows us to write a single application that can be run on Apple iOS and Google Android platforms. Mobile apps for the E-Business Suite will share a common look-and-feel.

The E-Business Suite is a suite of over 200 product modules spanning Financials, Supply Chain, Human Resources, and many other areas. Our mobile app strategy is to release standalone apps for specific product modules.

Our Oracle Timecards app, which allows users to create and submit timecards, is an example of a standalone app.

Some common functions that span multiple product areas will have dedicated apps, too. An example of this is our Oracle Approvals app, which allows users to review and approve requests for expenses, requisitions, purchase orders, recruitment vacancies and offers, and more.

You can read more about our Oracle Mobile Approvals app here:

• Now Available: Oracle Mobile Approvals for iOS

Our goal is to support smaller screen (e.g. smartphones) as well as larger screens (e.g. tablets), with the smaller screen versions generally delivered first.  Where possible, we will deliver these as universal apps.  An example is our Oracle Mobile Field Service app, which allows field service technicians to remotely access customer, product, service request, and task-related information.  This app can run on a smartphone, while providing a richer experience for tablets.

Deploying EBS mobile apps

The mobile apps, themselves (i.e. client-side components) can be downloaded by end-users from the Apple iTunes today.  Android versions will be available from Google play. You can monitor this blog for Android-related updates.

Where possible, our mobile apps should be deployable with a minimum of server-side changes.  These changes will generally involve a consolidated server-side patch for technology-stack components, and possibly a server-side patch for the functional product module. Updates to existing mobile apps may require new server-side components to enable all of the latest mobile functionality.

All EBS product modules are certified for internal intranet deployments (i.e. used by employees within an organization’s firewall).  Only a subset of EBS products such as iRecruitment are certified to be deployed externally (i.e. used by non-employees outside of an organization’s firewall).  Today, many organizations running the E-Business Suite do not expose their EBS environment externally and all of the mobile apps that we’re building are intended for internal employee use.  Recognizing this, our mobile apps are currently designed for users who are connected to the organization’s intranet via VPN.  We expect that this may change in future updates to our mobile apps.

Mobile apps and internationalization

The initial releases of our mobile apps will be in English.  Later updates will include translations for all left-to-right languages supported by the E-Business Suite.  Right-to-left languages will not be translated.

Customizing apps for enterprise deployments

The current generation of mobile apps for Oracle E-Business Suite cannot be customized. We are evaluating options for limited customizations, including corporate branding with logos, corporate color schemes, and others. This is a potentially-complex area with many tricky implications for deployment and maintenance.  We would be interested in hearing your requirements for customizations in enterprise deployments.

Prerequisites

• Apple iOS 7 and higher
• Android 4.1 (API level 16) and higher, with minimum CPU/memory configurations listed here
• EBS 12.1: EBS 12.1.3 Family Packs for the related product module
• EBS 12.2.3

References

• Oracle E-Business Suite Mobile Apps, Release 12.1 and 12.2 Documentation (Note 1641772.1)
• Oracle E-Business Suite Mobile Apps Administrator’s Guide, Release 12.1 and 12.2 (Note 1642431.1)

Related Articles

• Using Mobile Devices with Oracle E-Business Suite
• Apple iPads Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1
• Now Available: Oracle Mobile Approvals for iOS

IOUC has organized Oracle User Group Presidents/Leaders conference at Sofia Balkan Hotel, Sofia, Bulgaria during May 20-22, 2014 for European, Middle-East and African Oracle User Group Leaders’ Community (EOUC). I got an opportunity to represent MEOUG as President of the group. I was going first to this summit. The conference started with the reception on the evening of 20^th May, met with number of new folks and leaders of different Oracle user groups. 1^st day started with the Introduction and Summit overview, all attendees had a intro slide, that was great to know each and every attendee of conference… it was a personal touch for everyone. Followed by welcome note from Bulgarian User Group President & Director User group relations.

The most amazing part of the whole summit was 4 Minute Pitch, where different Leaders shared their best practises, or key element area of the user engagement. Different topics were discussed including IoT (Internet of Things), working with Support, Gamifying user experience. End of 1^st day was City Tour and dinner on lovely place with all fellow folks and friends. Had a great conference and learned lot of new things, its mean more work for MEOUG……….

Heartbleed leads to ‘heartattack’ 🙂 during earlier this week to all Internet users and companies due to the OpenSSL Security vulnerability. Thought to share Oracle’s take on different Oracle Products depend on OpenSSL, you can go through following docs:

OpenSSL Security Bug-Heartbleed (Doc ID 1645479.1)

And public link of the info provided by Oracle:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/opensslheartbleedcve-2014-0160-2188454.html

other information to refer

http://heartbleed.com/

https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA14-098A

http://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt

Update on 18-April-2014:

Oracle has issued Security Alert for OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability CVE-2014-0160 by describing as:

The Security Alert for OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability CVE-2014-0160 was released on April 18th, 2014. This Security Alert addresses CVE-2014-0160 (‘Heartbleed’), a security vulnerability which affects multiple OpenSSL versions implemented by various vendors in their products. This vulnerability also affects multiple Oracle products.
Due to the severity and the reported exploitation of CVE-2014-0160 “in the wild,” Oracle strongly recommends applying the patches as soon as possible.
The Security Alert for OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability CVE-2014-0160 is the starting point for relevant information. It includes links to other important documents that provide a list of affected products and the patch availability information.
Also, it is essential to review the Security Alert supporting documentation referenced in the Advisory before applying patches, as this is where you can find important information.
The Security Alert for OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability CVE-2014-0160 is available at the following location: Oracle Technology Network: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alert-cve-2014-0160-2190703.html
All Oracle Critical Patch Updates and Security Alerts are available at the following location: Oracle Technology Network: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html

Oracle has released eBusiness Suite R12.2 for Windows x64 communicated through Steven Chan blog. We can download media from Oracle Software Delivery Cloud including documents and patches.

Whoever is going to install must refer Oracle E-Business Suite Installation and Upgrade Notes Release 12 (12.2) for Microsoft Windows x64 (64-bit) (My Oracle Support Document ID: 1330706.1)

The following editions of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit) are certified for Oracle E-Business Suite:

• Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter

Oracle E-Business Suite also supports the above editions of 2008 R2 as a guest operating system running in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V virtual machines.

Note: Beginning with this release, 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Server are no longer supported. Upgrades from 11i or previous versions of R12 (12.0, 12.1) on existing Windows 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems to 12.2 on Windows x64 are supported.

Further information?

• Certification tab on My Oracle Support
• Oracle E-Business Suite Installation and Upgrade Notes Release 12 (12.2) for Microsoft Windows x64 (64-bit) (My Oracle Support Document ID: 1330706.1)
• Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 Information Center (My Oracle Support Document ID: 1581299.1)

Time is passing very quickly ……I’m just recalling year 2012 and I was at Collaborate 2012 in Las Vegas  and now year 2014…. & Collaborate 2014 is on !!!

This year during Collaborate 14, I am pleased to share I have been selected to present at COLLABORATE 14: Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community – OAUG Forum and would like to invite you to attend my session in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 7-11:

Session ID #:  13771
Session Title:  Installation and Configurations of Oracle Fusion Applications – Lessons Learned
Date:  4/11/2014
Time:  12:15 PM – 01:15 PM PDT (local Las Vegas time)
Room:  Level 3, Murano – 3201

COLLABORATE 14 is designed to help users of the full family of Oracle business applications and database technologies gain greater value from their Oracle investments.

The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) Forum is hosting many breakout sessions tailored for you and your particular interests. Whatever your focus, there’s a session designed for you— visit collaborate.oaug.org to view the agenda. You’ll also hear from key industry luminaries speaking at COLLABORATE 14, including representatives from Oracle, and we’ll enjoy many great opportunities for conversation, networking and fun.

Register today for this must-attend event!  For registration information and the latest updates on COLLABORATE 14, visit http://collaborate.oaug.org.

 I hope to collaborate with you in Las Vegas!

In this ebook, I am covering installation of Oracle EBS 12.2 with following: