Intelligent ERP?

In this blog I just want to give my view on how things are moving in the JD Edwards community and with the JD Edwards ERP software specially. Looking back and looking forward to inspire all JD Edwards users, ERP managers, business analysts and others working in this thriving community.
I will not write about the complete history of JD Edwards but will pick some interesting and game changing moments in the last 15 years aligned with the more general changes in the IT industry.

In 2007 the first iPhone was announced, the smartphone incarnation was there. Moving from smart devices like Nokia, Blackberry and Palm to a new eco system allowing applications to be used on a mobile device. This connected with the growing mobile internet resulted in a potential new way to interact with business applications.

The first mobile applications were announced end of 2011 beginning of 2012. In 2014 Oracle released over 50 applications to be used with JD Edwards for free (check a PO Approval from that time here ). Applications were available in the Google and Apple application stores. Applications were developed in Oracles own frameworks such as ADF and MAFS and a Weblogic server was a requirement.

At that time a great achievement although in hindsight JD Edwards maybe announced it to early, even before the community was able to see the advantage of it since there were a lot of technology constraints raised by IT departments.
In 2016 the Citizen Development paradigm started to pop up. Look at the partner Summit recap youtube video presented by late John Schiff, which passed away way too early, here . He was addressing main trends around JD Edwards at that time. So not only citizen development but also the value in choice for any infrastructure including the first steps of cloud computing.

The Citizen development paradigm was setting the way to improve user experience with a lot of personalisation and configuration options to create that top user experience users are expecting from mobile apps and other modern applications.

In the summer of 2015 Oracle JD Edwards announced the IOT Orchestrator. Initially a product to collect, filter, analyze and act on real-time (sensor) data. Check out this great JD Labs video featuring Gary Grieshaber. We didn’t expect this product to be a future game changer for the JD Edwards eco system. The Orchestrator transitioned to a completely new integration architecture to allow easy API Rest integration and process Orchestration. Besides external connections also recurring internal JD Edwards processes could be automated to create a kind of RPA solution with in JD Edwards.

In 2016 we started looking how we could take advantage of the API integration capabilities connected to a new way of development coming up as part of the citizen development paradigm: Low Code and Now Code development. At that time we created a special lab environment to test and experiment the combination of these new technologies. We more or less connected everything to JD Edwards, Approvals using Alexa, our own IOT cloud solution, Mobile apps based on Mendix low code, Beacon technology for the warehouse etc. etc. We used the three layer Gartner model to position traditional ERP connected to innovative systems. This separation worked well to explain customers how to look at the complex ERP environment with a fresh view. The Orchestration platform enabled an easy connection between the layers.

You still can see some video’s here.

At that moment, Low code, No-Code were unknown terms for most customers in the ERP scene, something you can’t imagine nowadays where Low Code / No Code is now an essential part of the Oracle JD Edwards (mobile) strategy. Oracle discontinued the Mobile Application Framework and its Mobile applications for JD Edwards in the app stores, leaving the ground to a modern mobile application architecture based on Low Code / No Code development.

In parallel, the cloud story continued, more and more customers are leveraging the public cloud of AWS, Azure or Oracle OCI to run their JD Edwards environment and take advantage of connecting it to other cloud applications or cloud middleware. This was creating a foundation for future innovation and digital transformation.

Now with the next big thing, Artificial Intelligence, coming up it is interesting to see what will be next with Oracle JD Edwards ERP. The speed it developed in the consumer market is even faster than the adoption of previous groundbreaking technology as the Internet itself, Mobility or Social media.

Moving from Traditional, to Digital ERP and now arriving in the ERA of Supervised or Intelligent ERP. Will JD Edwards data end up in a Large Language model? Will user interaction move from a web application to a chat interface? How can AI technology improve and simplify JD Edwards ERP usage? Exiting times a head. Check my next blogs coming on how Metis Edge can support you on your AI and ERP journey.

Interested in the AI version of this article? check it here.