Will Oracle’s Fusion Suite be released soon?

Without providing a specific timetable, Oracle has been busy pulling its many software acquisitions into its in-development Fusion applications.

Now, Oracle executives are indicate that an early version of this suite is nearing completion. Legions of Oracle coders are expecting it and many of them can actually get their hands on the thing…

• 450 customers are participating in the Fusion Suite development and providing feedback to Oracle; and
• 130 customers are taking part in an early-adopter program.

Oracle plans to begin beta-testing this year although nobody seems to know for sure when the suite will be released.

Customers with existing maintenance contracts can transition to Fusion at no extra charge so customers are likely to adopt this new suite rather than pass the opportunity to get a suite comprising business intelligence (BI) from Oracle’s Hyperion integration. Expect Retek and ProfitLogic acquisitions to add even more muscle to the suite.

In a nutshell, Fusion provides modern apps natively built in Java for modern business IT and as such, customers will be able to customize applications in exciting new way because, as Charles Philipps said, the design of each app, from the ground up, is to allow changeability after it ships.

As a final note, customers should know that the transitions to Fusion should be painless since its data models will be a superset of those in Ocale’s current applications.

Tags: oracle, fusion suite, java, information technology, it, business intelligence, bi, hyperion, retek, profitlogic, upgrades, oracle apps, charles philipps, modern business it, fusion development, fusion apps, fusion code, fusion beta, middleware

Concerns over enterprise uses of P2P

End-users already know how powerful a peer-to-peer (P2P) network can be when data needs to be shared, especially across large groups.

To better understand how people can make proper use of P2P networks, consider User A who creates something interesting, let’s say it’s a nicely laid out document on “how to install an air conditioning unit in a window”. That information is likely to be useful to a whole lot of other people so User A makes it available (for free) to anyone who wants it through a P2P community, using software such LimeWire, BitTorrent, Morpheus or eMule.

The more people share this document, the more easily available it become through the P2P community, thus spreading the load (cost of bandwidth or CPU time, mainly) across more and more end-users. It’s a very smart way to distribute data which can encompass anything digital, including music, videos and code.

So this kind of network is likely to appeal to enterprise users but since the data used at the office is likely to be more sensitive than the stuff from home, IT Security admins need to assess the P2P threat before the problems occur.

Instead of banning P2P networks altogether, companies should educate their users and show them how to use these networks without putting the company and its data at risk of being leaked to outsiders.

Why is P2P so important for companies?

Well, because of its architecture, P2P networking is a good way to run apps across shared computing resources and share public data. P2P is often employed in research, education and bioinformatics. In business environments, it has potential for file sharing and collaboration while providing major efficiencies in storage and CPU power.

Assuming the IT Security people have put the appropriate policies and controls in place, P2P is a faster, cheaper way of sharing media files and by all means, that’s a growing requirement in many companies who may even find it useful to develop custom P2P apps to cover their specific data distribution needs.

While file systems may be exposed by inattentive users, properly configured company firewalls should be able to stop illegal data movements. The greater risk comes from laptops sharing data over P2P networks outside the company firewall so that’s where the education part becomes so vital to the overall security of a company’s data.

As long as companies monitor P2P usage (within their firewall’s realm) and the networks (from the “outside world”), there should be less risk of embarrassing data leaks, copyright or privacy violations.

Tags: p2p, peer-to-peer, networks, enterprise, data, leaks, privacy, companies, it

More opportunities for Web 2.0 workers

Enterprises are now expecting IT pros to leverage technologies such as blogs, social networks, mashups, wikis and RSS.

While Web 1.0 is set to be part of the digital landscape for a long while, the market has clearly shifted to Web 2.0 methods of interfacing with the users who, using the latest technologies, have much more control over the general flow of data.

The number of companies calling on Web 2.0 technologies to address problems facing their information systems is on the rise and IT workers should act accordingly by offering at least part of the skill set that the job market requires.

To date, most IT departments have resisted Web 2.0 tools, viewing them more as consumer-grade solutions which represent less interest than their other investments but 2008 might be the year all that could change.

According to Robert Half Technology, CIOs anticipate a 15% increase this year in the need for IT workers with Web 2.0 application development skills.

Web 2.0 technologies deliver considerable value for the money they cost so it’s no surprise that more businesses turn to “profoundly user-centric” methods of conveying “the right data to the right people”, in a way end-users are most likely to appreciate.

Enterprise inroads for Web 2.0 skills might first occur where information worker problems remain unresolved, such as help desk ticket resolution, IT project management, document tracking and email.

Also, wherever knowledge workers abound, expect IT departments to be hunting for talent capable of adding value to the company through the smart implementation of blogs, wikis and even RSS feeds.

Tags: web 2.0, blogs, social networking, mashups, wikis, rss, it, jobs, hiring

Time to break down the corporate silos

In the modern enterprise, information technology is an enabler for more productive collaboration between all departments, units and workers.

At a time when key performance indicators (or KPIs) should be readily available for all information workers and especially the C-level, it seems too many decisions are still taken without a clear picture of the real-time data that underlies critical applications, infrastructure and projects.

So even if IT could deliver awesome “dashboards”, ripe with timely and highly readable information, it seems way too many companies fail to tear down their corporate silos to produce such data.

The advantages of overcoming the silo approach makes it possible to envision a much better understanding of the company, as a whole. For instance, in an “un-siloed” company using , the IT department can get much better “real time” information so to anticipate (and resolve) the problems instead of merely reacting to them.

Having some kind of central repository, most likely gathering data from many sources, makes so much sense because to be able, in a single window, to identify [for instance] the performance of critical systems and projects in real time empowers people to act on things, way before problems occur.

It seems straightforward enough to work as a company-wide team but still, too many companies force their employees to rely on manual extrapolation of multiple applications, each containing silos of critical data, to go about their daily work. At best, this results in hit-or-miss decision making and a dangerous slide towards a certain inertia. At worst, working from flawed assumptions leads to significant costs, delays and wasted resources.

Retrofitting portal software to pull together solied data can help but overall, it does little to correlate information into useful guidance. In regards to software destined to enterprises of all sizes looking to implement dashboards, inquire with vendors such as BMC, Oracle, CA, Hewlett-Packard and IBM who are melding business service management (BSM), business intelligence (BI) as well as project and portfolio management (PPM) tools into overall dashboards.

Expect implementation and integration to be somewhat demanding while customization is plain inevitable (call it a “technical challenge”). This complex work might involve SOAP or XML bridges, especially if your application infrastructure isn’t homogeneous.

The payoff for such a bold transformative project towards dashboards mainly resides in the newfound ability to have largely useless data chunks (when taken individually) suddenly provide highly correlative insight, from all the data collected.

If your company isn’t using dashboards yet, now is probably a goodtime to break down those antiquated corporate silos to create infinite value from your various data sources.

Tags: dashboards, corporate silos, bsm, bi, ppm, kpi, it, critical data, information, enterprise

Essential IT projects for modern organizations

Modern organizations usually find it easier to build on their current information system processes to meet tomorrow’s business challenges. Building everything from scratch, all over again, can cost a bundle.

As such, IT spending is spread across a rather varied selection of initiatives that help profit from the current infrastructure while pushing towards the latest trends in technology deployments.

Organizations need to protect their assets, understand what their information stream contains and analyze it thouroughly, expand to new markets without hurting their domestic business model all the while become ever more mobile and accessible, especially through the web.

In this light, here’s a quick list of projects your organizations might want to look into in order to get the most from the hottest business technology trends. Wikipedia links were added for easier access to complementary information regarding each theme.

• Application integration – legacy meets the newest gear
• Business analytics – finally understanding what the market is saying
• Enterprise portals – the ultimate team-building bridge
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management) – links your helpdesk to the customers
• Intrusion detection and prevention – lock the thieves out
• Data management – get a feel for more powerful databases and bigger storage
• VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) – the phone as yet another internet appliance
• Mobile devices – anything without a wire
• E-commerce – electronic transactions from all over the web
• BPM (Business Process Management) – eliminate inefficiencies across every layer of any organization
• Web services – that’s where the customers expect to get a hold of you

In most organizations, these initiatives are the ones already being alloted the most money and for a good reason, they enable new levels of performance across a extensive array of key features of any forward thinking corporation.

Fortunately, credible open source projects (look at SourceForge) exist for all of these projects to be successfully initiated and realized in every organization, even the smaller ones.

Tags: modern organizations, e-commerce, it, mobile web, voip, crm, open source, enterprise portals