UKOUG - I've Still Got Something to Give

I've been a volunteer at UKOUG for over 15 years, but my time on the board finished in March. I said at the time I hoped I would still be of use to the user group and I am now standing for Editor of Oracle Scene.

I want Oracle Scene to represent the whole community and have articles within an edition that will drive everyone to read it. I love walking into an Oracle Office and seeing the high quality physical magazine, it really is our opportunity to reach those who have never heard of UKOUG.

But I also love the online version and everywhere around the world users like to read the high quality articles we attract.

So please vote for me, so I can continue to serve you.

Best Way to Celebrate the Old Certus - A grand Finale - Vote for Us

In May Certus was acquired by Accenture and I posted then about how it was a fitting outcome, much deserved.

Technically we move to Accenture on 1st October, so today we are still Certus, and it is business as usual.

It would be fantastic to have a grand finale and celebrate all that Certus has achieved.  A wonderful way to do that could be success in the UKOUG Partner Awards which will be announced at that time.





So I am asking you to vote for us. If you are our customer, or an end user who has been impressed with our projects or UKOUG presentations please vote. We believe in the user group and sharing the challenges and lessons learnt.

We have been nominated in 3 categories: 

UKOUG HCM Cloud Partner of the Year

The last year we have had several projects on the go. Phase two of DHL, a HCM project, which they shared at OOW and UKOUG; an architectural implementation of ERP for a global Financial Services; an amazing global HCM project with a very complex integration story as well as our joint project with Accenture at the Home Office which is currently in UAT, alongside HM Treasury that went live at the end of last year. We have also just kicked off a couple of other government projects.

All our projects are HCM and ERP but unfortunately we were not shortlisted for the ERP award. However our reputation in HCM is second to none so being successful here would be amazing.

UKOUG Middleware Partner of the Year Award

In true Certus tradition we continue to work with Oracle Product Development on PaaS, how we can extend the Cloud SaaS for our customers. We have continued to work with VBCS which I presented at conferences last year, and are currently working with Oracle on a prototype for managing workforces, which several of our customers are interested in.

Last year after Oracle Open World I was set the challenge by Certus to deliver a chatbot that actually uses HCM Cloud , no smoke, no mirrors and thanks again to help Oracle Product Development we first demonstrated this at the HCM SIG earlier this year, and then at Collaborate. We are continuously improving this and it will be a session at both OOW and UKOUG this year.

We continue with our eProseed partnership to deliver a wider PaaS4saaS landscape for a global construction company.

UKOUG Industry Product Partner of the Year

If we only win one prize this year, this would be the one. Our engage.gov solution for government is why we are leaders in government and were able to hold a Government Cloud Success Day in February and have many departments come and hear from our customers. engage.gov was designed to ensure that UK government could adopt Cloud as risk free as possible. Each project we have delivered has been on time and on budget and allows departments to embrace modern technology with confidence.

In the past I have been concerned that voters are put off because I was a UKOUG board member but that was never true, however this year I have finished my board commitment and am a 'free women' although still an active volunteer.

Please vote for us; help us have our grand finale.

Rant - OPN and ADDM!

I should have good statistics for this blog, it should appeal to many different communities, OPN or the Oracle Partner Network will spark the interest of one community I work in and ADDM or Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor will have my technical friends thinking I have crossed to the other side. 

Actually the acronyms need to be used together: OPNandADDM

Oracle Product Names and Acronyms Drive Debra Mad!

I'm an Oracle ACE Director, a software advocate and this isn't a direct moan just at Oracle, everyone does it but they are a great example.

We all suffer from acronyms over use, and as someone who presents regularly I have to constantly remember not to use too many. A quick google on the overuse brings back many studies of the problems this can cause.

I teach a course that I abbreviate to AYNTKAO - All You Need To Know About Oracle. It is aimed at people having their first Oracle project, not necessarily someone starting an Oracle career, it could be a very experienced change manager or project manager who has not been exposed to them before. I try very hard to avoid the TLA, although many products in Oracle have moved to four or five letters (isn't this a sign to someone, somewhere, there are too many?).

You need to be careful, sometimes names are created to match the acronym. 

I have joked in the past I would like to meet the person responsible for creating the product names within Oracle, do they pick the names to match the acronym they will be known as? 

It would help if there was a single glossary, it would help. Tell me if I have missed one in my search. I can find them in some product documentation but very few people use one product in isolation.

Three things annoy me:

1. If there is an acronym use the right one!

eg E Business Suite is EBS - not E-Biz or E Bus even wikipedia is confused.

2. Within one organisation don't duplicate

As I said we don't use products in isolation so this confuses people. 

OCI in the database glossary stands for Oracle Call Interface but
OCI also stands for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

3. Be careful if you change a product name to re-use the acronym

I worked for the same company for 25 years. When I left because they had a company range of mobile numbers they re-used my number for someone else. Today almost 5 years later he still gets calls for me. How frustrating must that be?

OCS is Oracle Cloud Services (the organisation that manages the cloud), but until very recently was Oracle Consulting Services, who have been renamed simply Oracle Consulting or OC. People are still using the old acronym and getting others confused.

And what prompted me to write this blog? answer = ABCS

Google TODAY thinks I mean PBCS - but glance down the list and you soon find there is ABCS, the original name for VBCS which I think is changing it's name again (still following?)

I loved the name ABCS it was a great acronym for a product aimed at citizen developers, and I wrote an Oracle Scene article in 2017 and a presentation I was very proud of; it had a great ring to it. 

Extending your Cloud HCM is as simple as ABCs. 

It's name was changed From Application Builder Cloud Service to Visual Builder Cloud Service. ABCS was not to be used................

Until last  week when Oracle launched ABCS Autonomous Blockchain Cloud Service. Don't get me wrong I think blockchain has a big future in my area and I was excited about the launch. 



Oh and what does Oracle ACE stand for? Not sure this is official but Awesome Community Expert has a great ring to it!

Thank you to all at UKOUG

My time on the board of UKOUG came to an end in March, and although I am still an active volunteer and have not left the organisation, I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you.

First for the opportunity to grow both as an individual and in my professional career. I would recommend volunteering to anyone in our community, it will motivate and educate you.

I was very touched to receive a generous voucher from the board to say thank you for my service. 

I spent the money on a bench and some plants, so that I can enjoy the view from my house. 

As I said I haven't left, currently very busy with the Apps18 committee and hope you will agree we have a great agenda and will be joining us in Liverpool.  

I have also just applied for a role on Oracle Scene. You don't get rid of me that easily!

OUGF 2018 - Kiitos kutsusta

Last Oracle Open World, Pasi Jaakkola the President of the Finnish User Group asked me if I would like to give an Applications keynote at their 2018 conference, their 30th Anniversary. 

I have spoken for this usergroup twice before, their 20th Anniversary Event and as part of an OTN Nordic Tour in 2014.

This year the event was held in Vanajanlinna just over an hour from Helsinki. Not only was it a fantastic location but it was unseasonably hot for Finland and just wonderful. I had a suite overlooking the lake and would love to take a holiday there sometime.

They provided a bus from the airport and we were given a little tour of the countryside including a visit to Pasi's home where we drank champagne as his family played music for us.

I had three presentations:

1. My keynote - Cloud Applications, back to basics
2. Extending Cloud Applications with VBCS
3. Should I move to Cloud Applications, route to the Cloud

The Back to Basics session was the first of the conference, and as is common in Europe it was a predominately technical audience but they did seem interested. I talked about how the technology enabled the application and what components were used. I know Oracle tell you it doesn't matter, you are buying or rather subscribing to a solution, but organisations who have had on premise applications do want to know.

And even if the audience are not Oracle applications users, the principles of design are relevant to any development. As ever to me the measure of success was the number of questions I had, both during and after the presentation.

After lunch I had my other two presentations, one after the other.  The VBCS presentation was the first time I had used release 2 in a session and on the whole it behaved well, except for a small glitch at the very end on the mobile app. I had been more concerned about the wifi which had been patchy, but all worked out well. I really enjoy this presentation as I can make it relevant to the event, so we collected data on those intending to use the sauna. 

Then my final session was the 'route to cloud' that I gave not too long ago as community keynote in Dublin, and based on my Oracle Scene article at the end of last year. This prompted some questions around data centres and organisational strategies especially around cloud @ customer. 

Part of the reason I had such a great day was that the audience were interactive. Also there were some great speakers who asked questions and added answers to the conversation. 

That evening after a wonderful dinner it was time to enjoy the grounds of this amazing location. Finland is so far north it was way past 11pm before it was dark, and such a great time to relax and get to know people.

The Wednesday I had finished my sessions. Pasi works for Accenture, who you will remember have just acquired Certus and their global lead for the database, a fellow ACE Director Julian Dontcheff is also based in Finland. Also speaking were new colleagues from Enkitec and in total about 10 Accenture people in attendance so I was able to learn a bit more about how the company and specifically Oracle work.

This was a great conference, and I loved that I was able to present something new to a traditional audience and yet they all learnt and appreciated. The location was amazing and I'll certainly be back.

UKOUG Applications Conference 2018

We need your input!

The Oracle Applications world as many different answers as there are user organisations. So what content do we need to include in our UKOUG_APPS 2018 Agenda?

When I first got involved with UKOUG, we simply has E Business Suite, sliced by the different modules. Today we still have EBS, but we also have those looking at Cloud, and those who have already moved. 

The apps tech community is busy supporting these applications at all levels of the stack and to extend them. 

Business Analytics and some Hyperion based solutions are now mainstream with Applications.

We have users using 3rd party tools to get the most from their Oracle investment. Reporting solutions, archiving, configuration management, tax and foreign exchange.

You can see where I am going, our communities can be sliced so many different ways. 

Then we also want to bring you off piste content, like innovation, business challenges and emerging subjects.

So please reach out and tell us what you want to hear about, comment here, on my twitter , linkedin, however you can find me. 

Even better share your story, submit before 4 June. Let us know if you need help turning it into a presentation, or coaching if it is your first attempt. We can help.

Thinking About Oracle Cloud Applications Support

Last week Oracle announced a revision to their Cloud Applications Support . At first glance it looks great, anything that gives the customer more is welcome.

I haven't seen a lot of commentary on this but I like this from Denis Beagle from my friends at Diginomica oracle-announces-autonomous-services-media-day, he talks about it being paid for from the actual subscription costs. I totally agree with that statement but actually think Oracle is moving some of the role of implementation and customer success into support. This makes sense, when Oracle only had a few customers they could have named people in these roles but as the size and quantity of deals has grown the roles have been stretched. Smaller customers are now managed off shore and to move some of their remit into support is an obvious step.

More of interest to me is the paid for support. The company I work for has a post go live support offering for Oracle Applications and have found it very appealing for those to want to continue taking up the continuous innovation and have a consultant at the end of the phone.  This is especially important during upgrade times and the new move to quarterly updates will change the way customers look at their systems.I don't think Oracle is offering that but time will tell.

Thanks to Tim Warner Certus-Solutions

In fact I am currently on a tour of our customers talking about the key changes relevant to them in the last major, traditional upgrade to R13. Knowing their implementations we can filter out the changes we don't think are relevant to them and it makes it a much more focused conversation. But for all of them understanding the new regime takes a little getting used to. 

Finally in this look at support, I also read about an agreement between Rimini Street and Salesforce for their cloud applications . It was a big surprise but made me think, would we ever see one between Oracle or SAP and Rimini Street?