PDFKey takeaways:
- The PLM–oriented community experienced a rich and coherent set of presentations that detailed progress of Oracle’s Product Lifecycle Management applications roadmap, and case studies of successful implementations.
- The highest–value applications of Oracle’s Agile continue to occupy the broader territory of PLM outside of CAD data management.
- Oracle’s PLM product direction is clearly aligned with the company’s overarching cloud and software–as–a–service (SaaS) strategies.
- Notable strength in value delivery of Agile’s expanding consulting and system integrator relationships, especially in PLM–emergent industries.
At the Oracle OpenWorld 2012 mega–conference, held from 30 September through 3 October in San Francisco, the presence of Oracle’s Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) was woven through numerous tracks but the insight provided was worth the effort of seeking it out. Oracle’s PLM leadership provided navigational guidance to the few hundred PLM devotees out of 40,000+ conference attendees. As a result, the PLM–oriented community experienced a rich and coherent set of presentations by Oracle product managers, customers, and consulting partners over the course of the four–day event. These presentations detailed the progress of Oracle’s PLM product roadmap and case studies of successful implementations. Agile’s highest–value applications continue to occupy the broader territory of PLM outside of core CAD data management—the landscape that John Kelley, Oracle’s Vice President of Product Management for PLM, calls the “Product Value Chain.” Oracle’s PLM product direction is clearly aligned with the company’s overarching cloud and software–as–a–service (SaaS) strategies. It was interesting to note the strength in value delivery of Agile’s expanding consulting and system integrator relationships, especially in PLM–emergent industries.
There were fresh strategy and roadmap presentations for several focused solutions in areas such as ideation and innovation management, product and portfolio management, quality management, cost management, visualization and business analytics, in addition to the annual updates on Agile’s PLM platform products (Agile 9.3.1 and Agile Product Lifecycle Management for Process). These focused solution presentations, especially with accompanying case studies presented by customers such as Broadcom, Coca–Cola, Eli Lilly, Global Foundry, Motorola, and Starbucks were informative and compelling. There were also presentations on Oracle’s progress with integration tools, such as Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA), and pre–built integration accelerators, such as the Oracle Process Integration Pack (PIP) for Oracle Product Data Hub. These reports were supported by examples of customer implementations of PLM across business domains, such as Sunoco’s integration of Agile with Oracle E–Business Suite (EBS) for change control across engineering and manufacturing operations. All of these reports and examples showed the expanding reach and use of PLM across the enterprise.
Further evidence was presented at this year’s event that Oracle Agile will comply with and leverage their corporate architecture, Oracle Cloud and Oracle Fusion Middleware. There was a session on the Oracle Fusion Product Hub. In general sessions of the broader OpenWorld event, Oracle explained that Oracle Fusion Applications, their SaaS product suite, are designed to be moved at will from on–premise to private cloud to public cloud and back again. The Oracle Fusion Product Hub is intended to solve the multi–channel commercialization challenge, by providing a cloud platform for publishing consistent and localized product information to the full range of sales channels, which typically include store, web, call center, and kiosk. The report was presented jointly with the CEO of Fideltronik, an Oracle services partner.
Agile’s partners were again a strong presence at this year’s event. In addition to application development partners such as Mahindra Satyam for mobility apps, who were a minor presence this year, consulting and systems integrators played a major role. Kalypso, a significant services delivery partner, made joint presentations with customers again this year. Another important partner is Deloitte Consulting, making two presentations of customer success stories. Agile has their own well qualified services organization, but they seem to have found the secret to cooperation rather than competition with services partners. Perhaps this is a positive influence from the Oracle corporate culture.
Agile’s go–to–market channel structure may, at least partially, explain the unique value pattern of their product suite. Despite having consulting and systems integration partners as channels and a small dedicated sales force, Oracle’s Agile is still sold primarily through the Oracle corporate sales force. This sales force engages with major customers across a broad industry spectrum selling Oracle’s complete architecture and product perspective. This exposes Agile PLM to a broader than usual set of value targets within a wide industry range. Such exposure surely impacts the Agile product roadmap and results in unusual and value–rich possibilities for its customer base.
In summary, the Agile PLM progress report during Oracle OpenWorld 2012 was informative and inspiring. Oracle’s Agile PLM solutions provide a robust solution portfolio of interesting and impressive implementation successes across the broader landscape of the PLM vision. We expect more interesting developments and high value case studies that push the envelope of PLM to be reported by Agile over the next year.
