I got a chance to attend Oracle Fusion CRM PartnerLab (ECEMEA PILOT) 2 days workshop organized in Dubai on 18th and 19th Dec-12 by Oracle. This PartnerLab was based on discussions, presentations, demonstrations and hands on exercises.

Following areas were covered as per agenda items with discussions, Lab and review/Q&A.

• Territory Management
• Customer Hub
• Campaign Management
• Lead Management
• Opportunity Management
• Forecasting Management
• Extensibility

Trainers were good, having good knowledge of subject, we were very excited to work on Fusion applications, my first impression directly working on Fusion CRM application was prodigious and we all attendees were trying to compare Oracle eBusiness suite vs Fusion Applications vs Siebel CRM experience. Fusion application is entirely different taste, 100% web based and look/feel is almost the same, what we are getting on social media sites like facebook/linkedin/twitter. Functionality wise i will cover later on…

I will cover few of the takeaways here from this workshop; here are quick screen grabs of Oracle Fusion Applications. Login page of Fusion CRM (the instance we got for Lab)

Lead Creation Page looks like:

Glimpse of Social Network direct integration, you can see from below screen shot

Highlights from Road Map of Oracle Fusion CRM 

Fusion Mobile R5 (Current) is having native applications on iOS, Blackberry, you can get Fusion Mobile sales on blackberry

Got a new term Social Makeable Language being referred in fusion apps development for social media.

Native MS outlook client for Fusion is available –Customers, leads opportunity will show directly in outlook and opportunity details will be directly viewable in outlook

Oracle Fusion R6 (Planned)

• In Fusions R6 marketing will support for sms
• RightNow integrated with Fusion and opportunity Reports can be viewed in RightNow
• Fusion Tap native application for ipad will be released for opportunity, leads, customers, contacts.

Oracle Fusion R7 (Planned)

• FUSE the new ‘any device’ user interface for sales team – a glimpse give a good user interface based on today requirement what common users are using in social media
• Fusion R7 will support for web landing pages and microsites

Oracle Fusion R8 (Planned)

• Fusion Mobile for Android to get real time CRM data,
• Audit Trail will also be introduced,
• Simple quote, sales agreements, pricing will be introduced,
• B2C – Person centric contact management,
• Dynamic layouts
• Oracle Social network will support custom objects,
• Outlook extensibility via Apps Composer, separate tab will be available for outlook
• Object Renaming like customers can be renamed to customer client etc

Fusion R9 and above (Planned)

• UI Refresh Look & Feel
• Cloud Onboarding – concept to give trial on cloud for prospects
• Enhanced Social ROI reporting to get what company is getting from social media
• Audit Trail on Custom Objects
• Create Incidents from Fusion
• Complex quotes for Telecom
• Student recruitment and enrolment
• Oracle Voice – works like Siri for Sales, Native application interaction

Reports and Analytics – BI Report Composer, web-based report creation/customization cycle you can see from below screen.

New Customer Creation form in Fusion CRM

Finally a week full of oracle technology rhythm is over in San Francisco starting from 30-Sep to 4 Oct.

I reached to SFO on 28^th Sep Friday evening; weather was cloudy just checked out of my hotel in Union Square named as Oracle Square… Was there a big arrangement for with Music festival

Saturday 29^th Sep, I spend roaming in San Francisco, visited Farmer Market in Ferry building, China Town, Lombard Street and to end with to visit Alcatraz.

Saturday evening I just spend on doing some cosmetics changes in my presentation. This year I was attending as speaker in Oracle OpenWorld and my session ‘CON6172 – How to Manage a Successful Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Upgrade and Overcome the Challenges’ was scheduled on 1^st Oct Monday at -4:45pm to 05:45pm.

Sunday morning, registration went very smooth as Oracle really has organized very well the entire registration process, after that I have attended few of the sessions and finally the time comes for Key Note from Larry Ellison with the title ‘Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together: Why It’s A Different Approach’. He spoke to few announcements about IAAS, Oracle Database 12c and Exadata X3, in memory database.

Oracle announces new version of oracle Database 12c for 2013. A multitenant Database for the Cloud.  Complete new database architecture with the concept of “container” database which may handle several isolated databases within this container.

The pluggable databases feature enables multiple databases to share a common instance it will treat as they are on separate instances. This will enable to save lots of memory and lots of time to do routine patching and upgrading databases. users through Pluggable Databases feature can also very easily spin-up instances without the usual process of dedicating and initializing a server. We can also upgrade the software for multiple database instances simultaneously, instead of doing one at a time. This feature will provide flexibility and simplify administration, and will be useful to manage a database within either a public or private cloud.

2^nd key feature is multitenancy support in the 12c database. This feature enables the DBAs  to define resource allocation and priority by tenant and so separately manage the service level of each tenant.

Oracle Database 12c will also feature more advance use of memory and data compression, reducing dependency on disk I/O not only delivers better performance with ease of administration

Prior to this session there was another keynote from, Noriyuki Toyoki, Senior Vice President of Fujitsu Limited (sponsor of the OOW) introduced “Athena”, a new technology architecture for SPARC processors as the result of a long partnership between both Oracle and Fujitsu.

Oracle also announced a new version of the Exadata X3 machine with much more memory and flash drives to push entire database into a flash cache.

Collaborate 12 April 22-26 has concluded & overall, I really enjoyed the event, this was first time I joined Collaborate such a big event and in the city of Las Vegas….all set was stunning experiences. I will start off with a big thanks to all the organizers from OAUG , IOUG and Quest , with a special mention for OAUG who made sure I found the right accommodations, a good reception and oracle sessions and networking with the right folks.

The conference was arranged in Mandalay Bay, Convention Center, Las Vegas, it was a good venue having good

environment with ample space for breakout sessions and a praiseworthy to see Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay. OAUG Attendee Welcome Reception was arranged in Shark Reef Aquarium on Sunday evening .

The conference kicked off with a keynote from Captain Mark Kelly, Commander of the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s Final Mission on Leadership, Teamwork and Courage. It was good to listen non-oracle keynote, no tech mumbo jumbo and Captain presented his personal challenge of his life, which he faced when an assassination attempt was made on his wife, former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. His dedication to family and his wife’s road to recovery would captivate Mark Kelly. He expressed to all conference audiences how to accomplish their mission while maintaining the love and devotion to family that is the foundation of true success. Overall it was a great motivational speech.

The 2^nd day (Monday 23^rd Apr) of conference kicked off with a keynote from Oracle CIO & SVP Mark Sunday on “IT at Oracle: The Art of IT Transformation to Enable Business Growth.” His presentation stressed the importance of simplifying IT and how Oracle is implementing different parts of engineered system as a customer of Oracle Products. It was good to listen about all modules of e-business suite, databases and how they are managing the data centers. The rest of the session topics reflected Collaborate’s mixed nature as a melting pot of three different user groups (OAUG, IOUG and Quest). I have attended number of sessions from a big number of speakers on the agenda, who showed off a wide variety of expertise with specific sessions. Over all conference was heavily based on Fusion focused sessions with E-business suite R-12 to upgrade and lot of Oracle strategy/roadmap sessions.

During the evening there was a Welcome Reception in the Exhibitor Showcase area at 6pm, a large number of companies joined Collaborate to showcase their products and number of booths were having lot of fun activities, THEgame, Relaxation Lounge, OAUG Tattoo Parlour and many more….

On Wednesday Apr 25, there was a BACK TO 80s PARTY, a performance by The Spazmatics, with all the awesome sounds, styles and radical dance steps from the 1980s, The Spazmatics recapture all the best and the worst of the decade for an evening of pure energy and entertainment.

It was a great week with lot of fun, learning & networking with peer folks, and thanks to everyone for making Collaborate 12 a boundless event for me.

All in short, Collaborate 12 was a great show with a massive agenda and attendees eager to learn about the latest solutions in the Oracle technology, number of parallel sessions were good and there was a point to which session will be attended and which one we can miss out…. muddled

In the end, to rest my voice…… feels free to share thoughts on the conference?

Finally we have reached to a week of Majlis 16^th & 17^th Apr planned as a 1^st under the MEOUG name. There were lots of preparations throughout last 40-50 days to make this event as successful, finalization of agenda, getting ready with the speakers, venue finalization, communication plan, event plan etc etc……. in short it was a very good event organized by local volunteers. MEOUG Majlis was organized on in Hotel Westin, Dubai, almost 250+ attendees register for an exciting 2 days conference. Senior executives from 8 different middle east countries joined and Oracle road-map, shared by Cliff Godwin (Oracle Senior Vice President) and Nadia Bendjedou (Senior Director).

There were number of end users presentations and it was good to hear about different implementations approaches, challenges faced and the solutions implemented in different industry groups. Over all Oracle Fusion, EPM/BI and upgrade to R12 were the hot topics discussed.

On the end of day 1^st there was very well organized Networking Dinner at Amphitheatre in Hotel Westin with the delicious food and good program was organised during the event is ‘Voice of Oracle Users’. .. There were no Oracle representative during this session and different customers faced their challenges being faced in Oracle account management, support, consulting, presales and overall product related technology issues. Was to hear from users what they feel about oracle products.

In the end of 2^nd day, it was tiring but we all were very happy to arrange such an event based on Oracle users Community and there were surprise from Oracle Dubai team for us when they called MEOUG Board Members on stage to present certificates of appreciations…..isn’t surprise!!! It was 🙂 thank you guys…..

you want to become member of MEOUG, please join us on www.meoug.com and you’re welcome…..