Everything you need to know about Oracle Fusion Application

Oracle Fusion Applications

Oracle Fusion Applications (OFA) is a suite of enterprise resource planning software applications from Oracle Corporation. It is distributed across various product families; including 

·         Financial management 

·         Human capital management,

·         Customer relationship management, 

·         Supply chain management, 

·         Procurement, 

·         Governance, and 

·         Project management

Oracle Fusion Applications were envisioned and pitched as an enterprise resource planning suite - a combination of features and functionality taken from Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Siebel product lines. The suite is built on top of the Oracle Fusion Middleware technology stack; both layers implement the Oracle Fusion Architecture, which leverages the capabilities of service-oriented architecture.

It was launched in September 2010 and released one year later at Open World 2011

WHAT IS "ORACLE FUSION"

People often get confuse with this term .To start with, it will be a good idea to know the difference between Fusion Applications and Middleware. Oracle Fusion is composed of two parts:

Fusion middleware and Fusion applications.

·         Oracle Fusion Middleware aka FMW: Comprises of the Oracle Application Server and other technology stack components that Oracle has acquired in past few years.

o   Fusion Middleware is a family of middleware products covering areas like BI, Identity Management, Content Management and SOA.

o   Each of these areas has its own stack of products. Fusion Middleware was previously called Oracle Application Server.

·         Oracle Fusion Applications:

·         Oracle Fusion Applications is Oracle's next generation suite of applications that eventually replace E-Business Suite. It will assimilate best of breed features from:

o   E-Business Suite

o   JD Edwards

o   PeopleSoft

o   Siebel.

ORACLE FUSION ARCHITECTURE

Oracle Fusion Architecture (OFA) is a standards-based technology reference architecture or blueprint for building applications. Note that Oracle Fusion Architecture is not a product, and can be used without licensing it from Oracle. Many organizations use it to write applications that can run on Oracle Fusion Middleware or that compliment Oracle Fusion

Oracle Fusion Architecture is based on the following core principles:

·         Model Driven: For applications, business processes and business information

·         Service & Event: enabled: For extensible, modular, flexible applications and processes

·         Information Centric: For complete and consistent, actionable, real-time intelligence

·         Grid-Ready: Must be scalable, available, secure, manageable on low-cost hardware

·         Standards-based: Must be open, plug able in a heterogeneous environment

Features of Oracle Fusion Applications

·         Complete, standards-based foundation

·         Role-based experience, tested by the world’s leading organizations

·         Increased productivity throughout the enterprise

·         Built-in flexibility, from top-level executives to front-line users

·         Embedded business intelligence, provided at the point of decision

·         Supports faster, more informed decision-making

·         Improved accuracy of decisions

·         Choice of deployment options

·         Runs on-premise, in a hosted environment, in the cloud or a through a mix of each option

·         Modular, flexible uptake options

Experience Oracle Fusion Apps in

·         Customer Relationship Management - Oracle Sales Cloud combines a mobile-first strategy for sales reps and managers with powerful analytics and forecasting, customer insights, and seamless integration with marketing and partners for increased revenue.

·         Financials – It helps in revolutionizes productivity and information access with native, real-time intelligence.

·         Governance, Risk & Compliance - Oracle Fusion Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), a component of the Oracle Fusion Applications suite, sets a new standard for risk assessment & management.

·         Human Capital Management - Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM), a component of the Oracle Fusion Applications suite, sets a new standard for innovation, work, and HR.

·         Procurement – Oracle Fusion Procurement, a component of the Oracle Fusion Applications suite, sets a new standard for strategic supply management.

·         Project Portfolio Management - Oracle Fusion Project Portfolio Management (PPM), a component of the Oracle Fusion Applications suite, sets a new standard for the project-driven enterprise.

·         Supply Chain Management - Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management, a component of Oracle’s Fusion Applications suite, is a revolutionary new approach to collaborative, multi-system order fulfillment and product data management.

The Benefits of Making the Leap to Fusion

It’s certainly tempting to move to Fusion. Here are some reasons why:

·         It’s positioned as the next-generation Business Applications solution by Oracle

·         It offers the best-of-breed from enterprise solutions acquired by Oracle

·         It’s built on a service-oriented architecture and SaaS model.

Oracle Fusion Applications is an all-encompassing suite of Oracle applications built for comprehensive business tasks such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and human capital management (HCM).

Fusion Applications has many different modules catering to different aspects of business functionality. In addition to CRM and HCM, modules include applications for financials, procurement, Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and supply chain management (SCM). Customers can adopt one or more of these modules and run them in their own data center or in a hosted or cloud computing environment.

The Oracle Fusion Architecture’s SOA and EDA (event-driven architecture) technology consists of

• An integrated service environment (ISE) to develop services
• A multi-protocol enterprise service bus (ESB) to integrate applications
• A services registry for discovering and managing the life cycle of services
• A BPEL-based orchestration engine to tie services into business processes
• A business rules engine to enable business policies to be captured and automated
• A Web services management and security solution to enforce authentication and authorization policies on services and to monitor services and processes for compliance to SLAs

Fusion Middleware Component for E-Business Suite

In the Fusion Middleware of E-Business Suite, here is the list of components:

·         Application Server

·         BPA Suite (Business Process Analysis)

·         Business Integration

·         Business Intelligence

·         Identity Management

·         SOA Suite (Service Oriented Architecture)

·         Web Center Suite

On the technology front, Fusion Applications is completely developed using Fusion Middleware 11g on Oracle database 11g. Here is the list of technologies used in developing Fusion Applications:

·         SOA Suite (BPEL, BPM)

·         BI Publisher

·         Application Integration Architecture (AIA)

·         Applications Development Framework (ADF)

·         Applications Server

·         Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE)

·         Content Management

·         Database 11g

·         Enterprise Manager

·         Fusion apps are metadata driven which is managed by the MDS
framework

WHAT IS IN FUSION V1.0 ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS

Oracle Fusion Applications offer a complete suite spanning seven critical business areas consist of 100+ Oracle Fusion Applications modules which is targeted for first release. These are distributed across the following product families: 34 - Sales & Marketing; 21 - Human Resources; 13 - Financials; 6 - Purchasing; 7 - Projects Portfolio Management; 10 - Supply Chain Management; and 10 - Governance, Risk and Compliance. Majors are:

·         Financial management

·         Supply chain management

·         Procurement

·         Human capital management

·         Project portfolio management

·         Sales

·         Governance, risk, and compliance

·         Enterprise performance management

 MIGRATION TO ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS

The Oracle Fusion Applications platform was built with flexibility in mind, so companies can selectively add modules if and when it makes business
sense.

With the initial release of Oracle Fusion Applications likely focused on point solutions, most users will be concerned with how to integrate Oracle Fusion Applications into their core applications. This will be a substantially easier effort than migrating the entire core functionality

There are options/proposed path which can observed in various Oracle papers.

Here’s a plan for IT side which may be consider to be crafted roadmap for the future of enterprise applications

1.     Continue on Your Current Path .That mean you need to evaluate the latest Applications Unlimited releases Oracle Applications releases such as Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3, PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.1, Siebel Customer Relationship Management 8.2, and JD Edwards Enterprise One 9.1 for the additional value they bring to the businesses .In addition to gaining value today, you will be in a position to upgrade to Oracle Fusion Applications in the future, if and when you choose.

o    EBS -> Fusion Apps

o    PeopleSoft Financials to Fusion Apps

o    PeopleSoft HRMS to Fusion Apps

o    Siebel CRM to Fusion Apps

2.     Move to Fusion Step by Step. You need to adopt standards-based technology first. Consider Oracle Fusion Middleware as in-house new imitative and developing skill sets in technologies such as Oracle Application Development Framework, Oracle content management products, Oracle SOA Suite, and Oracle Web Center. These tools will help you integrate, extend, and manage your applications environment today and prepare you to add Oracle Fusion Applications if and when you choose by upgrading one environment and then reemployment rest whatever/whenever.

3.     Upgrade to Fusion Applications. Decide (if and when appropriate.)
If you use any functionality that is not part of V1 but still see business value in going to Fusion Apps, this may result in multiple Fusion Apps instances.

4.     Adopt a coexistence strategy. Add Oracle Fusion Applications modules to your existing environment or implement “pillars” (human capital management, sales, financials, or supply chain management applications whatever suits) to extend the power of Oracle Fusion Applications into your      applications portfolio.

Product Supported Release for Fusion Upgrade

·         E-Business Suite :Release 11.5.10, 12 or later

·         PeopleSoft: Release 8.8, 8.0, 9.0 or later

·         JD Edwards Enterprise One: Release 8.11, 8.12 or later 34

·         JD Edwards World Release: A7.3, A8.1, A9.1 or later Siebel Release 7.9, 8.0 or later

 SKILL REQUIREMENT FOR FUSION SPACE

In-house IT as well as consulting company’s needs skill such as BPM and process governance, to manage an Oracle Fusion Applications implementation.

The following technical skills are needed to extend, maintain and support the various components of Oracle Fusion Applications:

• SQL, PL/SQL, JAVA & java script
• XML – Extended Markup Language
• CSS – Cascading Style Sheets
• XSL – Extensible Style sheet Language
• ADF – Application Development Framework
• JSF – Java Server Faces
• Web Services
• BPEL – Business Process Execution Language
• AIA – Application Integration Architecture
• Web Center
• BI Publisher
• OBIEE – Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition
• Hyperion Essbase
• Web Logic Server Administration
• Oracle Identity Management