New EBS development lead
Last year at AI World Inoapps sponsored a round table for EBS customers. Cliff Godwin was asked what happens to the community when he leaves and his answer was that he had a great team behind him that would step up. Since then, Cliff has retired and Lisa Parekh, who has been in that development team for longer than Cliff, has taken on the role of head of development. At Ascend, Nadia, who isn't in Development but Product Strategy, introduced Lisa to the community present at Lisa's keynote.
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| Lisa and Nadia at Ascend |
Still no end in sight for EBS
The session started as ever with Oracle’s commitment to E-Business Suite. I think most customers now understand that support is rolling, but Lisa added the nuance that when the time comes there will be 10 years’ notice, and that notice period has not yet started.
What’s new in EBS documentation?
In the latest release 12.2.15, there are again many new features, but what appealed to me was the What's New approach to the documentation led by Jeanne Lowell. This is similar to what we have in Fusion applications, which is searchable with your favorite search engine and its embedded AI.
Currently 12.2.15 is in this new format and they have rewritten 12.2.14 and 12.2.13 the same way and are working on other versions in reverse order. Check them out. This is such an easy way of looking at what has been released—and remember there may be value for you in the intermediate releases, not just the last release.
Technology changes
EBS is about to have a technology upgrade, moving Middleware to 14c. Normally the uptake would be slow. Organizations have made big changes to their systems, and an upgrade means a lot of testing. However, this changes will mean technology and application are separated and the tech stack upgrade will be independent of the application.
This is currently in beta testing with a few customers, but you can follow the progress and understand the process by following Elke Phelps series on their EBS Technology blog.
Hosting of EBS
Often an upgrade has an impact on your hardware, and this is just one of the reasons customers move to a cloud hosting solution for EBS. Oracle state that over half of EBS customers are on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Renewed interest in ECC
Enterprise Command Centers again has lots of new features and I am seeing a renewed interest in ECC. Some organizations who tried it in its early days and didn't feel it gave them enough additional value are looking again. The Oracle demos of ECC are showing much more functionality. My own point of view has been that many customers believe that they have solved these problems with their investment in 3rd party tools, but ECC is aimed at operational intelligence and there is so much they offer.
AI: Ask EBS
Part of the reason for the renewed interest in ECC is that this is the architecture of the data being used as the base for Ask EBS—the AI that’s been documented for the community.
Just a reminder, as I see this as a myth: you do not need to implement or have ECC in order to use AI. It just uses the same views and you just run that part of the process to give you the basis for the AI.
Oracle does not deliver the AI or Ask EBS as a patch. There is a white paper see: Enabling Natural Language Query of Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Release 12.2, Leveraging Oracle Generative AI (MOS Article KB859326, Formerly MOS Note 3059877.1 ). This explains how you build it and includes all the steps.
Each time this is presented, there is a caution given that you must, when starting your project, redownload the document as it is a living document and the one that you looked at a few weeks ago may not be the current version. At Ascend, two big changes were highlighted: previously you needed an autonomous version of the database and this is no longer true as you can use the 26 AI without autonomous. The second change is you can use your own favorite LLM.
Built on AI; made easier?
In my sessions and when I talk about Ask EBS, I finished by asking "is AI the tipping point for customers to move to Fusion?". The reasoning behind this is that you have to build the AI for any data source that is not an Oracle Cloud product. So for Apps Unlimited, you need to build the AI solution.
Oracle Ask EBS is doing that using the Select AI Service that allows you to ask natural language queries and get a response from your EBS system. My belief is that for each challenge you have for each requirement, you are going to have to build the AI solution. I explained that getting information from the EBS database that has always been an issue since the beginning of time.
In the Oracle ecosystem these difficulties or challenges are addressed by third party organizations—partners who build a solution that can be bolted on to your EBS. As with any applications conference, Ascend had a significant number of these third parties who are very successful in providing solutions to their community. I've always said that these ISV's see a gap and then bridge it, and it may be short term until Oracle catches up or it may be longer term.
There are many very successful partners in this area, and at Ascend there were partners adding to their portfolio, and others dipping their toes into the market and coming up with solutions for AI in EBS. My own employer, Inoapps, recently announced the acquisition of JDE partner KS2 who have built some incredible solutions for AI within JD Edwards—so this model of partners filling the gaps is natural. Expect more on AI for Apps Unlimited at AI World in October.
Modernizing is more than just AI
Most people are talking about Generative or agentic AI, but classic AI is also modernizing EBS, and I am seeing a lot going on here, from automation to document imaging. APEX is also an excellent tool for modernizing your EBS, alongside integrations through OCI, mobile web applications.
Conclusion
EBS is certainly not dead, and the organizations using it are not standing still. They are moving forward at their pace in all areas.
