OpenWorld Had Little News for J.D. Edwards Integration

Most of the people I talked to at the recently concluded Oracle Open World were asking the question: "Where's the Beef?" Sure there were hundreds of sessions, but most of the sessions lacked depth. Reporters complained that Oracle executives dodged interviews and there were far more questions than answers. When will Fusion be delivered? When is the next version of Oracle J.D. Edwards World going to be released? How will J.D. Edwards users benefit from Fusion Middleware? Which components of the stack are needed for coexistence, which ones are required for migration?

With so much due in the future and so little delivering today, there were plenty of unanswered questions. Perhaps the most exciting thing about the conference was the sheer energy and mass of the gathering – some 41,000 people packed Moscone Center and the Hilton, where the J.D. Edwards program was centered. Quest International User Group put on a nice reception. But useful hands-on sessions that go beyond the basics were in short supply. It's as if Oracle thought there were 41,000 CEOs attending Open World instead of 41,000 IT professionals.

The current war between SAP and Oracle has many customers concerned as to whether or not they should upgrade. Most are searching for coexistence rather than migration, and that's where solutions like JDE Connect and the iBOLT Integration Suite appear as a right-sized approach to integration, whether they plan to upgrade or not. Most World customers will probably continue to solve urgent integration challenges with custom RPG programming. But for some enterprises, code-free alternatives like JDE Connect deserve a closer look.