From Jan 29th till 31st, 2018 our flagship event, Modern Supply Chain Experience, saw nearly 3000 participants, many of whom were interested in Oracle Product Lifecycle Management. More than 500 PLM executives and technology experts got a chance to witness a number of PLM sessions, demos, workshops, exhibits, and had a chance to meet during daily networking opportunities.

The event is a testament to Oracle´s commitment to making each individual customer successful. Critical to this initiative is our continued support of our Agile PLM customers – not just for today, but for a lifetime, as of our Oracle Lifetime Support Policy. Our customers enjoy the benefits of the industry´s most comprehensive support coverage, which provides major product and technology releases, 24×7 assistance with service requests, access to My Oracle Support including Knowledge Base, and much more. The Oracle Applications Unlimited program is Oracle’s promise to continuously innovate in current applications while also delivering the next generation of Cloud applications. It gives our customers visibility, choice, time, and innovation. Customers have access to Oracle’s product roadmap to plan upgrades, allocate resources, and secure budgets, they can tailor their enterprise business and IT strategies, enjoy reduced downtime, shorter upgrade cycles, proven upgrade paths and methodologies.

What we announced at MSCE was the continuation of our customer commitment with a new release model. In the past, we have delivered a new release of Agile PLM in a 9-12 month cadence. For example, we have delivered 9.3.5 in January 2015, 9.3.6. in January 2016. Why are we not delivering 9.3.7. this January 2018? The answer is simple: We have switched from a waterfall development process with yearly releases to an agile sprint/scrum model for both Agile PLM and the new Oracle PLM Cloud. Agile PLM is now on a 2 month sprint cycle and we will release enhancements and bug fixes every 2 months in what we are calling “release roll ups” − this is very similar to what we called service packs in the past. Oracle PLM Cloud will now be on a 3-4 month sprint cycle with 3 or 4 code drops or releases per year. This change enables simplified development, quality assurance and faster innovation cycles. The end results − better code quality and support by enabling development and QA to focus “where it matters” in order to benefit our customers. The first RUP in 2018 (9.3.6.5) has already been released, and 9.3.6.6 is already in progress.

In addition, while we continue securing and extending the value of your investment in Agile PLM, Oracle R&D brings the latest technology to your applications investments. We are dedicated to helping you remain competitive by providing you with new technology that enhances the way that you do business.

The Need for Continuous Innovation

The world is now connected and digital. The reality is that smart devices and products, IoT, AI, AV/AR are enabling new business operating models including Industry 4.0 and Products-As-A-Service. These new digital business models demand speed and the old way of stitching together a series of applications through integrations that run nightly or even several times a day just does not deliver the speed necessary to meet the requirements of today’s businesses. Would Uber exist if it took a day, an hour or even 15 minutes to line up a ride, no!

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FREE APICS / Oracle Webcast: Is Product Lifecycle Management Ready for the 4th Industrial Revolution? ___________________________________________________________

These new business operating models demand a digital Supply Chain platform that operates and reacts in real-time. This platform needs a common language or digital thread. Oracle PLM Cloud is the next-generation of PLM and provides the enterprise product record and digital thread needed for a digital supply chain to operate at high speed. Not to mention, Oracle’s PLM Cloud technology comes with built in analytics enhanced by IoT applications and is integrated with adaptive intelligent (AI) apps. This, ultimately, enables you to streamline the development of connected products and services.

Your Foundation for On-Premise to Cloud

Oracle has established the foundation for organizations looking to go from on-premise to the cloud. With the customer in mind, Oracle has built best-in-class SaaS applications. With a true Software-As-A-Service deployment, the cost is stable and the value of the investment always increases as we continue to add more innovation into the Application Services.

But it is not simply an “Either” – “Or”. True to our customer first approach, Oracle will continue supporting and adding functionality required to keep your business running whether you want to stay on-premise with Agile PLM, go to Oracle PLM Cloud, or deploy a hybrid model. Yet, for those organizations looking to go to cloud, Oracle PLM provides you with a flexible path. You can easily augment existing Agile PLM installs with added value from PLM Cloud: Adding Innovation Management (IM) to Agile PLM adds Ideation, Requirements Management and Traceability and Innovation Portfolio Management. In addition, adding Product Hub Cloud to Agile PLM adds Commercialization to your existing PLM/ERP solution, and forms the basis for a migration to next generation PLM that bridges the gap between product development and the downstream processes. The appropriate Out-Of-The-Box integrations are available. And if you are a net new Oracle PLM Customer, we suggest to onboard PLM Cloud directly for quick return on innovation.

Digital Thread PLM across ERP, SCM, and CX

The industry has talked about PLM managing the enterprise product record for years. However, the reality is that traditional PLM has created a consolidated Product Development Record, but the Enterprise product record is still fragmented, with product records everywhere: In Product Development, in Manufacturing, Maintenance, Quality Management, IoT…. Yesterday’s PLM does not deliver the speed required to achieve Digital Transformation or the Digital Thread. Managing the development product record is fine and still core, but it is no longer enough.

Digital Transformation is forcing companies to create more connected real-time applications (platform) to create a digital thread that radically improves speed and the customer experience. The joining of product records creates a new architecture: a true Enterprise Product Record for the Digital Thread. The Digital Thread requires that true Enterprise Product Record that delivers a complete 360° view of a product, its changes and quality and business process flows through all applications in the thread. Oracle has a unique value proposition because PLM, SCM and ERP are all on a single platform with a single data model. Yet, with our completely open architecture, your company can perform easy integrations to legacy or third party systems.

Together with our partners we are well equipped to support our customers in any stage of their PLM Cloud Transformation. We have the migration tools to move from Agile PLM to PLM Cloud, and we have the integrations if you want to co-exist. Our partners have started to build extensions, for example Inspirage has built a solution for Governance and Compliance, Kalypso has built an extension to manage recipe formulations, GoSaaS has developed Agile A9 to PLM Cloud migration utilities, and XPLM has built integrations from PLM Cloud to MS Office and CAD, such as SolidWorks, Creo, SolidEdge, AutoCAD, Inventor, CATIA, or NX – just to name a few.

The guiding principles for a future-proof and safe path for Oracle’s adaptive PLM are openness and choice, added value for our customers, and simplicity and ease-of-use. We received excellent feedback during our discussions at MSCE, our numerous customer advisory board meetings and customer’s social collaboration. We will continue to put you, the customer, first.

For more information about Oracle PLM, check the Oracle PLM Website.

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FREE APICS / Oracle Webcast: Is Product Lifecycle Management Ready for the 4th Industrial Revolution? ___________________________________________________________