Oracle Enterprise 2.0 becomes Oracle WebCenter

As the people following Oracle’s steps in the social arena have noticed, Oracle rebranded their offering Oracle Enterprise 2.0 to Oracle WebCenter.

The reasoning behind this rebrand seems obvious: The web has a more prominent role in everybody's life then ever. Social networks to keep up-to-date with your friends, wherever they may be. But also networks to keep track of your business contacts. And what happens in the Enterprise: nothing. So it's time to do something about that. The rebrand to Oracle WebCenter reflects this: Oracle makes the Web experience through all available channels the most important aspect of their User Experience platform.

You could say that the Oracle WebCenter product stack is maturing and is getting more integrated day-by-day. As Oracle says “the different parts fit together like a puzzle”, altogether they form one user experience platform which enables a true single user experience: no matter what the channel is they use, be it mobile website, but even when they call up your contact center the same experience can be provided.

As WebCenter is the user interface of Oracle Fusion Applications, but also the future UI for other standard applications it has become a very important part of the entire Oracle Fusion Middleware product stack. Oracle continuously keeps investing in it either by developing, integrating but also buying new parts that further strengthen the product portfolio in areas were it didn’t meet the required level yet.

A recent example is the acquisition of FatWire a leading provider of web experience management solutions. So what is FatWire adding to the existing product stack? Well at the moment it’s still not completely clear how the integration will be done, but a couple of things are certain! It will be definitely used as the Web Management tool in combination with the existing UI’s. So it’s not only an addition to WebCenter, but also applications like ATG and Siebel. FatWire already succesfully integrates with those products, but will be even more integrated when it’s completely fused with the rest of the Fusion Middleware stack.

A key benefit of FatWire are the capabilities it has in the Social Tools area. FatWire is already integrated with all leading Social media which enables the direct use of these media in Marketing, CRM and Sales! Compared with the current WebCenter Suite that really is a key benefit, since this was not well developed yet.
Another key feature is the ability for so called “Business” users to be highly involved in and even in charge of the changes to the online web branding and experience. You don't need the techie guy from IT to change the header font of your news-items or adjust the layout of your online customer portal. You're in charge, if you like...
The third feature which will definitely be kept intact is Dynamic targeting, which enables real-time, context dependent content: a user will get information based on his profile, the situation he is in or the link he’s just clicked. All to get the best suitable interaction with the person you target in a campaign, on the site or in your mobile app.
Later this week Oracle will be announcing more details about the strategy with FatWire and how it will be integrated. Check back soon to read about this.

What is remarkable is that Oracle is not only talking about the Technology side of this acquisition and the rebrand. They deliberately also mention the integration with applications like ATG, Siebel CRM and Fusion Applications.

And to my opinion that’s spot on! The only way of winning todays customer in a B2C context, but also in B2B and even winning the employee of the future is to have a real social user experience in the workspace of Marketing, Sales and Service. By adding FatWire and further integrating and rebrandin gthe WbeCenter product stack, Oracle sets the future path for the enterprise: the Social Enterprise!
Don’t hesitate, because the number of “social natives” is growing day-by-day and it is not only generation-Y who will soon make up the majority of the worlds population, start becoming social!

And think about the following: What if you would combine all this power in a solution together with applications like ATG eCommerce, Siebel CRM and Identity & Access management, how powerful would that be... I’ll get back to that soon!

Originally posted on the Capgemini Oracle Blog

Process, content and collaboration

Taking a look at today’s business, most companies still have a lot as far as adapting to and leveraging Web 2.0 possibilities is concerned. Sometimes it’s because of fear to open up, sometimes it’s non-compliancy reasons but in most case it’s still unfamiliarity with what benefits it could bring a business or what it is about anyway.

If we zoom into what Enterprise 2.0 or applying Web 2.0 within a corporate environment really implies, there are three factors that are most significant and describe the core of Enterprise 2.0:

• Process
• Content and
• Collaboration

We’ll look into each factor, see what it means and how they finally join to form Enterprise 2.0.

Process
Process means the (business) processes within a company involved in the day to day work people do within that company. This can be handling incoming calls from customers ordering goods and the entire process following that. In all cases those are little steps in the context of a larger sequence of steps. They are orchestrated or governed as you will to finally reach a particular end situation. Important in this respect is that these steps can be operated by an human-being or automated system and that the process is bound to change because of whatever influence from outside.
An aspect of web 2.0 influencing the processes is that now not only the inside of the company is involved in a process (with sometimes a starting point outside) but also the outside world is part of the process. An example of that is when Twitter is used to communicate on a particular issue back and forth or peoples comments on a blog about a new product.
In all circumstance it’s important that when people are involved, the aspect of these people interacting with each other in the steps of the process is crucial for the success.

Content
In Enterprise 2.0 sharing and combining of information is essential. The amount of information or content necessary at a given point in the overall process may vary but inevitably content is needed in order for a process step to make sense. What is important from a content perspective is also who is able to see which information, till what extend and what is the person or system allowed to do with it. This could be referred to as security of the content.
Probably the most crucial part in the content area of Enterprise 2.0 is that everyone shares the same information and people can all work together on that same content at the same time, seamlessly without worrying about things like versioning, etc.

Collaboration
Within the processes people and systems are interacting with each other, collaborating to eventually reach a certain state, product or relationship together.
The strength of people coming together and really collaborating could probably be best explained by the example of Open Source communities creating solutions. Not a single person is able to create whatever product on his own, you will always need others with particular expertise or capabilities which combine together to a particular product. In Open Source communities this is facilitated by Web 2.0 technology that enables discussions, commenting, tagging and drive decisions by rating.
Resulting in a collaborative solution in the end.

Value
We know now what the key elements of Enterprise 2.0 are, but what is it going to bring you? What value is in it from a business perspective? It should however be clear that if people start working together, supported by technology that enables sharing of the same content. And people can collaboratively combine and improve that along a joint and standardized process this will bring several advantages. Advantages like higher quality of work, more efficiency and innovation. This eventually will lead to business value like better customer support, innovative products, cost effectiveness and many more.

Probably a good thing to keep in mind when you send out your next yam or tweet …

Capgemini offers you the required technical skills to implement Enterprise 2.0 for instance by the means of Oracle Enterprise 2.0 for you, of course. More important we are able to determine together with you what the most important Enterprise 2.0 areas to focus on are, specifically for your business. Pragmatically choosing the most beneficial areas with the least effort and costs, and fitting it in with your current Oracle or non-Oracle landscape.

So if you think your company is ready to start acting in the Enterprise 2.0 arena based on the above, by working on one of the topics or a combination of these… don’t wait till your competitors start working on Enterprise 2.0, start benefiting now!

Contact us to discuss what value Oracle Enterprise 2.0 can bring your company!

Originally posted on the Capgemini Oracle Blog