The I.T. Side

Oracle commits to new features, themes, and functionality to on-premise licensed Data Relationship Management

Oracle covered some of the on-premise roadmap for DRM and ideas behind the new dimension management cloud service at Kscope 17.  Note:  Alot of this information is rumors, general direction, and not guaranteed whatsoever.

The SaaS cloud offering has not been officially named yet. Right now, they refer to it as DMCS, but that could change.

The major theme going forward is to provide the ability for customers to use pre-packaged applications for specific use cases. They are calling the packages “Application Adapters”

Oracle is focusing on how they are going to engage partners in the process. They want the partner community to contribute to the capabilities of the tool. They claim that will help partners differentiate but also have the ability to monetization the innovation. Oracle is relying on partners to compliment the investments Oracle is making with allowing partner packaged content.

These packages will probably work like with other integrations – a file based integration that would be uploaded with EPMAutomate into the inbox. More on that later…

Coming soon, there will be a minor update to on-prem DRM that will certify Java 7 and have some general bug fixes.

However, the big announcement is the new 11.2 on-prem release that is planned for Q4 2018 or Q1 2019. As with the other on-prem licensed EPM products, it will be supported until 2030.

Support matrix for DRM versions:

VERSION                    SUPPORTED UNTIL

11.1.2.3.x                   Mar 2018

DRM 11.1.2.4.x         DEC 2020

DRM 11.2                   DEC 2030

New certifications expected in 11.2 :

• FMW 12
• Java 8, (JDK 1.8)
• Third party:
  • windows server 2016
  • SQL Server 2014,2016
  • Chrome and edge browsers
• Product enhancements – which is still TBD. The candidates for enhancements are below

The on-prem11.2 Top candidates:

• Node access group security to restrict access to specific nodes based on node types
• Property masking capabilities – secure private or personally identifiable information.
• Schedule data exchanges – enhances import/export profiles
• Cloud enablement – external support connection for SFTP
• FCCS integrations to enable migrations from legacy consolidations.

Additional candidates under considerations for on-prem 11.2

• Packaged integrations with cloud: FCCS, ARCS, EPBCS
• Performance enhancements – load, save, copy, delete large versions
• Business glossary and metadata request experiences
• Impact analysis – DRM metadata changes
• DRG enhancements – request visualizations, mass approvals, scheduled requests, custom email notifications, customer headers/footers
• DRM analytics – user level change analysis, data qulity dashboard.
• Oracle EDQ integration
  • export, match, import, blend versions
  • batch property standardization and cleansing
  • DRG; Duplicate Identification on node creation.

The feedback for the partners at KSCOPE has been mixed. The biggest headache is integration with other products. The overall general feedback from partners was to focus on that. Some suggested they focus on ARCS integration and the need for it to seamlessly talk back to on-prem. The SFTP integration is a big win, because that could integration with anything, theoretically.

What’s new in EDM? The theme is “Master at your own pace.” Provide a platform for incremental non-disruptive data sharing across the enterprise.

The idea is to have smaller communities of users, to share dimensionality. So companies do not have to invest in a broader enterprise EDM program. Policies can be put into to place to share dimensionality and identify masters for smaller pieces. For examples you can subscribe to changes to automatically update masters.

• Masters and applications views.   A two-tier model allows true application views.
• Elastic Data Rationalizations
• Just-in-time governance
• Scalable Across Domains. Support for 10’s or even 100s of millions of members in a dimension via high and low availability options.

Data Management Cloud Service

Of course, Oracle is working on the cloud version. Initial version of Dimension Management Cloud Service will focus only on Finance, starting with ERP and EPM cloud and On-premise integration

Key features of the upcoming DMCS:

• Application (maintenance) and Master perspectives.
• Simplified Rich user interface
• Request-driven recorded actions
• Change visualization
• Compare and synchronize – side-by-side
• Packaged cloud app integration
• … not just hierarchies…

Focus is to Support for Hybrid Deployments

• Connect and sync with ERP and EPM
• Use RESTful services
• Cloud and on-prem.

Capabilities:

• Rationalize across applications build fully aligned views
• Visual curate master data to govern across applications

DRM will not port to DMCS. According to Oracle at the partner session: “We are not trying to move existing DRM customers to DMCS – it’s intended for net new customers.” You will not able to port everything from DRM. You could however, export the hierarchies via the natural import… but no rules, or anything else will port.

As far as app adapters – are called at run-time to create new applications. Initially they will have only two adapters: a generic adapter, and one pre-built for EPBCS. App adapters are essentially wizards that will 1.) establish the metadata needed for the intended view. 2.) Facilitate the import from the target.

For things like EPBCS, initially users will need to fill out everything – Alias tables, dimensions, etc. However going forward, the idea would be to have more live discovery that will allow you to choose existing items with forms pre-filled out.

Partners could be expected to develop adapters and capabilities for The Data Management Cloud

In the future, Oracle is contemplating  creating a framework and format to JASON so partners can create their own custom wizards and forms to create new app adapters and applications, without compiling code.

Partners will create App Adapters that consist of the following components:

• Application Registration
  • Connection parameters
  • Slots – process flow and questions for the application registration
  • Framework – defines connections between the slot answers and creation logic
  • Creation Logic – controls the creation and updating of DMCS objects
• Connection logic
• Import/Export Logic
• Validations

The app registration process has two phases:

Phase one: “Application and connections phase” – connection information, application type, etc

Phase two: uses slots/framework

Initially, it seems it will not be possible to export an app adapters to use as a template so that partners can reuse them at other customers.

Slots:

Slots are fields that are used to for application registration. Slots can contain other slots.

The slot types are:

• Questions: can be required or optional, can put in default answers.
• Lists:  like plan types, dimensions. Can have additional information on each item in the list… like Plan Name, Descriptions, ASO or BSO, Dimension name, etc.
• Summary – allow a user to review prior to finalizing.

Maybe later: conditional types, properties. Opportunities here could be things like Salesforce adapters

Framework and Creation Logic:

The Framework and Connection Logic is a set of detailed steps needed to crate the appropriate DMCS meta data to house the specific application instance. It will be a javascript and will have a set of calls available to create the necessary configuration.

Currently Framework and Creation Logic are hard coded in the app adapter. Later, partners will be able to configure it similar to slots.

Today, there is no monetization platform for this. They have not figured out how this will work how it will be supported and certified by Oracle, maintained/patched, etc. This would have to be a larger Oracle initiative that the DRM group themselves could not create an application marketplace on their own… so I don’t think there will be a platform for this anytime soon.

Regardless, it is not determined how successful this would be and many questions remain.  EPM partners are not software developers, but would welcome the opportunity to differentiate and potentially add to their revenue stream. What process would be put into place to protect the Intellectually property of the vendors, or will it just be bragging rights?  Will vendors have early access to start developing?  If so, who gets invited?

Will it be used?  In essence, Oracle would need to create and maintain a programing/development environment.  How much time would they invest in that as opposed to developing new features into the product itself?

Either way, as new enterprise data management customers consider a SaaS platform, partners will need to re-tool and change their role in the cloud to more of a modeling, JSON adapter development, and process flow partner rather than a true technical integration implementor traditionally done with on-prem DRM.

~ by Eric Helmer on June 26, 2017.

Posted in DMCS, DRM, Uncategorized