Oracle ERP – Blogs

Few days back I thought, let’s try to install Oracle fusion applications and started glancing different docs available and finally reach to a question number 1, what hardware required? Do I have that infrastructure to support me for this thrust? All these questions played vital role to write my earlier post on hardware sizing for Oracle Fusion Applications. In the last whatever hardware was available with me, just started to try out as an experimental basis and we will see J later on.

Downloading fusion applications media from http://edelivery.oracle.com  took few days based on my internet speed and meanwhile I was just exploring installation guide Oracle Fusion Applications Installation Guide 11g Release 5 (11.1.5) E16600-07

Another thing what I have done is just captured all the steps which I have followed during this installation drive and just going to share through this post. These all steps based on my own research and maybe there is error or wrong so I would suggest all of you to just follow Oracle’s standard guide to install Oracle Fusion Applications. However do let me know if you find any point erroneous or require modifications.

What will be covered in this?

• Basic Concepts/Architecture of Oracle Fusion Applications
• Where to start? How to start?
• Oracle Fusion Applications Media download from edelivery
• Download and Installation of Oracle Linux from edelivery
• Installation of Virtual Box
• Installation of Operating System – Oracle Linux
• Stage the Oracle Fusion Applications software
• Install provisioning framework
• Install a transaction database
• Install and configure Oracle Identity Management components
• Configure Oracle Identity and Access Management components
• Integrate Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Access Manager
• Create a provisioning plan for the new environment
• Provision a new environment
• Complete required post-installation tasks

You can download from this link

Part-1

http://www.oraerp.com/Thread-Installation-of-Oracle-Fusion-Applications

A lot went on today 15^th Jan, 2013 at Oracle CloudWorld, Dubai, I believe this was the maximum crowed of attendees in

any oracle event in Dubai during recent years. Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, United Arab Emirates was a good venue with ample space and was also very well planned and organized by Oracle. Reached early morning and registration also went smooth.

Oracle CloudWorld was the first event from series of Cloud events across the globe with the theme of “Mobile, social, and cloud are redefining how business gets done. Discover what your company can do to take advantage of these new opportunities and gain a competitive advantage at Oracle CloudWorld. Experience insightful keynotes, real-world case studies, in-depth Q&A sessions, hands-on demos, face-to-face networking, and dedicated tracks for different audiences.

Before sharing about the conference I thought let me put some highlight on ‘Cloud’ There are many definitions of Cloud Computing are, here is one of them that seems to represent the most commonly held view.  It’s from the National Institute of Standards (NIST).

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable

 computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

Breaking it down, cloud computing is composed of:

• 5 essential  characteristics
• 3 service models
• 4 deployment models”

Mark Hurd, President of Oracle came first time to Dubai to launch this event, started with the opening key note of Mark Hurd “Parting The Clouds: Transforming How you Do Business in the Age of Collaboration and Advocacy”

Few of the highlights of keynotes are: Oracle’s strategy to simplify IT with the introduction of full stack offerings along with On-Premise, Private Cloud, Public Cloud and Hybrid Cloud

Few of the bits on statistics grabbed from Mark’s keynote:  In 2 years data in the planet will double, some of which will be worthless, we should figure out to get wisdom out of it. Staggering Stat: Internet users exceed 2 billion worldwide with global penetration reaching 42% by 2016. More smartphones sold than PCs in 2012.

Executive from Emirates Airlines presented case study of Emirates during the keynote.

Last speaker of keynote session was Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group and she presented session “Social Business and Cloud”, this session was awesome. ‘Social business is about relationships’ very truly presented to audience of CloudWorld and ‘Master the art of failure’ Charlene tells, Follow the Google mantra: “Fail fast. Fail smart” and learn from mistakes. She also presented 6-stages of Social Business Maturity: Planning, Presence, Engagement, Formalized, Strategic, and Transformation. You can get more about Charlene on http://www.charleneli.com

There were number of tracks covering sales, Customer Service and Support, Finance and Operations, Human Resources and Application Developers during the entire day.

We as a part of Middle East Oracle User Group (MEOUG) got stall from Oracle to showcase volunteer group of Oracle

Users community and attract more volunteers to come forward and join MEOUG.

In the evening there was a Networking Cocktail Reception with surprise touch of regional Arabic belly dancer J

In the end, will wait for your comments ……. Be Sociable, Share!

From last few months, we are trying to figure out,

• What are the hardware requirements for Fusion Applications?
• How to do a hardware sizing?
• What are the parameters to baseline optimum hardware for fusion applications?

After Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Oracle also started pushing more efforts on Fusion applications to market in Middle East… Similarly from last few months we are struggling with the ‘mysterious’ sizing requirements for Fusion Applications. I read lots of forums posts, goggled and from different people asserting what the hardware requirements for Oracle Fusion Applications are….. and we are not able to find from any of document to clearly states the overall hardware requirements essential for Oracle Fusion Applications. We can find the hardware requirements for the individual components, but we cannot simply sum up of these requirements.

Few statements lead us that it requires 128GB RAM, other claims 60GB RAM or 90GB RAM.

After searching on Oracle Support I have found MOS note: Fusion Applications – How to get Sizing Requirement? [ID 1379929.1] and the Oracle’s comments are:

 “Oracle wants to ensure that each customer is successful with Fusion Applications and as it has over a hundred different components giving a sizing estimate has proven to be a bit of a challenge.

So instead of giving a one-size fits no-one estimate Oracle has a special process in place that will lead to a proper sizing advice.

It consists of contacting your Oracle Sales / Account person who in turn engages the Oracle Fusion Applications environment sizing experts team.

Based up on your inputs they will provide a proper sizing report recommending the disk and memory requirements and CPU sizes for your configurations and usage level.”

And the Fusion Application Installation guide says “Consult an Oracle Fusion Applications sizing-certified representative to obtain specific, customized system hardware requirements.”

Till now, we haven’t heard any other comments from hardware vendor to facilitate this process like major hardware vendors are providing Hardware sizing questionnaire for Oracle eBusiness suite (refer my earlier post for eBusiness suite hardware sizing requirements)

In short, we don’t have other choice to workout except to approach Oracle Sales Team for hardware sizing recommendations…..

Update on 17-Jan-2013

Oracle has organized Fusion overview training for partners in Dubai; there was a one session for Oracle Fusion hardware sizing process and the final conclusion is that oracle has dedicated team to work for hardware sizing and they have build Set of questionnaire to ask input from customers.

Following is the update from the session:

Sizing Process Overview:

• Identify Modules
  • Identify Fusion Application Modules
  • Pricing Calculator from ASM is a great place to start
• Gather Information
  • Use sizing survey to gather sizing information
  • Users, Servers, Virtualizations, operating systems, high availability, etc
• Perform Sizing
  • Use RAS tool for Fusion applications to create sizing
  • Manual sizing will be needed for some modules
• Verify Prerequisites
  • Verify pre-requisite components using price list supplement
  • May need to consult more than one price list supplement
• Create Bill of Materials
  • Use License Configuration workbook to create overall license configuration and bill of material
• Create Pricing
  • update or create pricing calculator for technology components
• Create Overview Presentation
  • Use sizing overview presentation template to create a customer presentable sizing overview presentation
• Review with Tech Team
  • Review the sizing overview with both the applications team and the technology team

Sizing Roll-up – Process Model

Reference Architecture Sizing Tool:

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

In continuation of my previous post How to install Redhat Linux for Oracle eBusiness Suite R12.1.1

Following updates are done in the document v1.1

• Redhat Linux Installation
• Pre-requisite/Preparation for Oracle eBusiness suite R12.1.1
• Readiness with Oracle EBS R12 software from Media or eDelivery
• Installation of Oracle eBusiness suite R12.1.1

You can download from http://www.oraerp.com/Thread-Installation-of-Oracle-eBusiness-Suite-R12-1-1 and don’t forget to share your feedback/comments to improve this document.

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.

I was just planning for schedule of different sessions/events should be attended during this year’s Oracle OpenWorld 2012, came to know about Oracle Bloggers Meetup 2012, feel overwhelming about this event and…… sure will be attending, ARE YOU ? just go through this link and get more info ….

What: Oracle Bloggers Meetup 2012

When: Wed, 3-Oct-2012, 5:30pm

Where: Main Dining Room, Jillian’s Billiards @ Metreon, 101 Fourth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 (street view).

http://www.pythian.com/news/35421/oracle-openworld-2012-bloggers-meetup

Long back I was doing Redhat Linux installation for myself on server or on Laptop with VMware and noted down all steps in my personal word docs; just thought to rearrange them and will publish here for community folks so what you will be getting in this doc is a typical RHEL 5 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5) installation.

It should be a good start for you, particularly who want to create his own environment for practise and learning and off course you can advance this process as per your environment and requirements.

In this document step by step installation with screenshots is covered with pre-requisite required for Oracle eBusiness suite R12.1.1 as per My Oracle Support note ID 761564.1

To download complete doc, please check below link…

www.oraerp.com/Thread-How-to-install-Red-Hat-Enterprise-Linux-for-Oracle-eBusiness-Suite-R12-1-1

This is a 2^nd part of takeout from last ATG Live Webcast June 14 was an introduction of new ‘Online Patching Cycle’ in Oracle EBS R12.2. ADOP (AD Online Patching) will replace ADPATCH as the 12.2 new patching tool. The first-hand information about ADOP shows that it will be follow phases from Prepare, Apply, Finalize, Cutover to Clean-up.

Oracle Application will be only offline during the Cutover phase as presented below:

In the Prepare phase (Preparing the File System) Patch Edition and Run Edition will be synchronized on the file system and a new Patch Edition in the database will be created. All files on the Patch Edition are an exact copy of the files on the Run Edition.

What type of synchronization?

• Incremental synchronization is the default
• Only files changed in the last patch application are copied
• Full synchronization available if necessary

Patch Edition is created in the database and all code objects in the Patch Edition begin as pointers to code objects in the Run Edition. Objects are only “Actualized” into the Patch Edition when a new revision of the code is applied. Storage objects such as tables are not copied. New patching standards are followed for upgrading storage objects.

In the Apply phase (applying patches) execution of patch drivers to update Patch Edition will be done. We can apply multiple patches and patches are applied to the copy (Patch Edition) as the production application is unaffected by the changes. Users are connected to the Application and can perform their work unaffected by the patch. Changes are made in the isolation of an Edition and the running application is unaffected by these changes

In the Finalize phase we will be performing the final operations that can be executed while the Application is Online like compile invalid objects, generate derived objects and Pre-compute DDL to be run at Cutover

In the Cutover phase downtime will be taken and users are logged off the system. The Patch file system is promoted to be the Run file system and the Patch database edition is promoted to be the Run database edition. Next action will be to perform final maintenance operations and finally users are brought back online on the patched system. We can also pause patching cycle at this stage for as long as it is required to wait for an appropriate downtime window (minutes)

In the Clean-up phase Cleanup occurs after users have been brought back online to the newly patched Application. The pre-patch file system is now ready for the next patching cycle and Database code objects patched in the latest patching cycle are deleted from Old Editions and once all objects are deleted from an Old Edition it is also deleted.

In the Abort phase the Online Patching Cycle can be aborted at any time prior to Cutover

Two complete file systems are always present Run Edition – Used by the running Application Patch Edition – Either, Currently being patched or waiting for the next patch cycle. These two files systems are rotated between Run and Patch during every patch cycle. Old Editions these editions are only used to store code objects that have not been patched in a later edition and we can remove by cleanup when no longer needed.

Old threads on R12.2:

http://oraerp.com/blog/e-business-suite-r12-2-no-more-downtime/

http://oraerp.com/blog/a-journey-from-oracle-e-business-suite-r12-1-to-r12-2/

I’ll be speaking at Oracle OpenWorld on September 30– October 4, 2012.

The details of my sessions are:

Session ID: CON6172
Session Title: How to Manage a Successful R12 Upgrade and Overcome the Challenges

If you are going to be there, please join my session and few of the benefits of attending Openworld are:

• Learn about the latest IT technology, upgrades, trends, and best practices
• Choose from more than 2,000 sessions and dozens of hands-on labs that will be led by the world’s foremost IT experts
• Share notes in special interest groups and product and industry sessions
• Network with peers and industry luminaries
• See hundreds of partners and customers as they present product demos and solutions in two Exhibition Halls
• Learn about Oracle product lines, plus overarching topics such as strategy, tools, and technology
• Join Oracle product experts and industry leaders in discussing Oracle’s industry roadmap, transformational business strategies, and solution-specific challenges