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AppsConnected24 retrospective

04-07-2024

AppsConnected 2024 took place in Ede on Tuesday, 6 June. This congress, organised by the OBUG, was opened by the "Godfather of Oracle E-Business Suite", Cliff Godwin (Oracle USA). Below a summary of this interesting congress.

Cliff Godwin gave a presentation on the roadmap for Oracle EBS with highlights;

The number of multinationals and governments that are fully standardised on Oracle EBS is huge, in short enough potential for a very long future;
Full integration with APEX is coming. By installing a future Applications Technology Group (ATG) patch, it will be possible to fully integrate APEX screens into EBS, without an additional intermediate end-user login;
There will be AI/natural language capabilities in Oracle EBS. You can then ask questions about your data and get answers too;
The "Oracle Business Network" is an interesting platform for companies that want to exchange data between different Oracle products;
The Oracle Enterprise Command Centres (ECC) are getting more and more interesting features with each release. This is the absolute future for data-driven and modern working with/in Oracle EBS. MCX already has several customers using this and can help customers implement it.

Oracle EBS roadmap

Thousands of organisations around the world rely on Oracle E-Business Suite to manage their core business operations. Oracle's goal is to keep these organisations successful by delivering new features and innovations and providing long-term Premier Support for Oracle E-Business Suite.

Oracle is following a "Continuous Innovation" strategy for adding new capabilities to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2. This strategy delivers ongoing updates to applications and the underlying technology stack without the need for a major upgrade. In addition, Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 provides long-term support with Premier Support until at least 2035.

In addition to adding new capabilities to Oracle E-Business Suite products, Oracle is applying enhancements to ensure it can take full advantage of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and work effectively with complementary Oracle SaaS applications.

Below are the highlights that apply to the EBS roadmap:

There will be a technology stack update in late 2024/early 2025 (possibly with an upgrade of Fusion Middleware);
Version 12.2 will remain the version for now. There are no plans to go to 14, 24 or anything else (i.e. no more major upgrades);
From 1 July 2024, EBS 12.2 Error Correction Baseline will be version 12.2.7. This refers to the minimum version of EBS 12.2 release eligible for error corrections (such as patches and bug fixes) from Oracle. If your applications are version 12.2.7 or lower, you will still receive support but with the following notes:
- By default, patches are no longer tested for 12.2.7;
- Because patches are no longer tested, you have to ask Oracle Development via an SR whether the patch was released before or after 1 July 2024, which is time-consuming and labour-intensive;
- Should you still need a patch, Oracle will create it, but it will obviously take longer;
So it is recommended to update EBS to the higher version before 1 July 2024;
Support is now guaranteed until 2035. But the trend is that this moves up every year:
- Statement Oracle: If EBS goes desupported, the US government will need more than 10 years to rebuild to something else: and they haven't started yet;
EBS version 12.1 support is really going to stop;
From 12.2.7, 23ai (the new DB version) will also be supported. 19c is until 2027. Certification is ongoing internally at Oracle for EBS.

overview

Oracle Enterprise Command Centers

Oracle is fully committed to Oracle Enterprise Command Centres (ECC). ECC is part of EBS that helps users gain insight and make decisions through interactive dashboards and comprehensive data analysis capabilities. These command centres provide a visual and intuitive way to access and analyse operational data without the need for in-depth technical knowledge.

With ECC's dashboards, key users can perform real-time, trend analysis with a few clicks and trace information from the general ledger to its source in the sub-administration or spot deviations in modules at an early stage. For example, think of higher expenses/costs in current period or compare them with previous years. Without ECC, you are dependent on proprietary reporting, standard Oracle reporting or data warehouse constructs.

In the future, AI will also be included in ECC. Of course, this will be security aware so that only data you are authorised to see can be seen.

In the new ATG release, work is also being done on integrating APEX into EBS. This will then replace Oracle Applications Framework (OAF). This will also enable direct Single Sign-On between EBS and APEX.

Oracle EPM Cloud

Oracle has been a leader in the Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) domain for many years. Through EPM, organisations can align their operational activities with their strategic objectives, improve decision-making processes, allocate resources more efficiently and ultimately optimise their overall performance and profitability. Be it planning, consolidating or streamlining the financial close process.

One of the solutions in Oracle EPM is Hyperion. This is an on-premise solution that requires the customer to handle the installation, upgrades, patching and functional set-up themselves. With Oracle EPM Cloud, Oracle provides a SaaS solution. It lies as a shell over the ERP system. Essential components for Oracle cloud solutions are the automated, monthly, cloud-based updates. As these are initiated from Oracle support, customers will still have to take them into account. It is important to determine the impact of the updates on your system, processes and data.

Single Sign-on to Oracle EBS via the Oracle Cloud

Security is a hot topic in IT, so too is multi-factor Authentication (MFA). During AppsConnected24, MCX together with Radboud University showed how the implementation of a Single Sign-On solution with MFA on Oracle EBS went at Radboud University. This involved the use of Oracle Identity Cloud Service (IDCS).

IDCS is an Oracle cloud-based identity platform that enables SSO services to access EBS applications. Besides IDCS, you only need one component called EBS-Asserter, which IDCS provides to implement SSO for Oracle EBS and other applications.

In IDCS, you can also integrate with the existing Active Directory (AD). To integrate IDCS with an existing AD (as in Azure, for example), you need to download the Oracle IDCS AD agent from IDCS and install it on the AD server. After the installation is complete, the AD server data is updated in the IDCS directory integrations. For 0.23 cents per month per user, it is a great solution. MCX has successfully implemented this at several customers.

Advanced Security in the Oracle Cloud at CAK

Together with CAK, MCX faced the necessary challenges to comply with all guidelines arising from laws and regulations and to mitigate all risks, as identified in the PIA (Privacy Impact Assessment), when migrating Oracle Health Insurance application to the Oracle Cloud.

This presentation covered topics such as:

Network-level zoning;
Proprietary Checkpoint firewall (not an OCI Native solution);
Customer Managed keys in-house (OCI Vault/ Hardware Security Module);
ExaData Cloud Service with 4 VM clusters according to OTAP principle;
Cloning of environments via Object Storage;
FastConnect and Site-to-Site VPN connections.

For more information, please contact us at: info@mcx.nl.