o r a c l e o p e n w o r l d a g e n d a a n d s h o w g u i d e N O V E M b E r 2 0 0 7 3 1

the Boss? By Leslie Steere

How user groups help drive Oracle’s product direction

rom the earliest days of Oracle’s first com-

mercial release, customers have banded

together in user groups to make their

voices heard. They’ve driven product

innovation, contributed enhancements,

planned user conferences, and shared best

practices with each other for leveraging

their investments in the software on which

they’ve bet their careers.

Twenty-five years after the first Oracle

user meeting, Oracle OpenWorld demon-

strates the continued importance of user

groups, with more than 80 user group

product, industry, and regional meetings

and 160 sessions delivered by user group

members this year. Worldwide, there are

now 420 Oracle user groups represent-

ing more than 225,000 Oracle custom-

ers. That’s great for Oracle—the company

gains understanding of customer concerns,

secures good beta-test and pilot-project

candidates, and has an efficient vehicle for

communicating new initiatives to the cus-

tomer base. But what’s in it for users?

who’s

F........

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Be HeardParticipating in a user group is like getting an inside line to Oracle—especially with the International Oracle Users Group Community (IOUC), an international organization that represents and promotes the collective interests of the affiliated Oracle global user groups and provides them with one voice to Oracle management.

“As a user, I am just a small voice, and it is unlikely Oracle will listen to me,” says Debra Lilley, deputy chairman of the U.K. and Ireland Oracle User Group and leader of the Product Development Committee of both the EMEA Oracle Usergroup Council (EOUC) and the IOUC. “As a major partner, my organization gets a bigger voice than I would as an individual, simply because of our size.”

For example, when Oracle first announced Oracle Fusion, says Lilley, users “couldn’t get enough informa-tion. Would they be forced to move to Oracle Fusion? Would it have their existing processes in it? How could they influence Oracle?” The IOUC met with Oracle Senior Vice President of Oracle Applications Strategy Jesper Andersen and Oracle President Charles Phillips before the start of Oracle OpenWorld 2004 and got not only an early briefing on the company’s Oracle Fusion plans but also a commitment to work with user groups on Oracle Fusion development.

To provide a single channel for this collaboration, the IOUC launched its Fusion Channel as part of the Product Development Committee (PDC), with Lilley as the lead. “All user groups have dealt with Oracle Fusion in their own way,” says Lilley, who in her day job is principal Oracle E-Business Suite consultant for Fujitsu’s Oracle Practices group, “but within the PDC, we have shared information and worked on joint initia-tives with Oracle. Users can submit their Oracle Fusion questions via the PDC Fusion Channel, and we have a conference call with Jesper Andersen every quarter, in which he answers current questions.”

John Matelski, past president of Oracle’s Quest

International Users Group and chief security officer and deputy CIO of the City of Orlando, Florida, agrees. “Customers who participate in Oracle’s user group com-munity are provided unprec-edented access to Oracle executives,” he says. “User group members are able to

participate on regularly scheduled calls to listen to, and ask questions of, senior executives including Cliff Godwin and Jesper Andersen, to name just a couple.”

“It’s essential that we have a voice in product direction,” adds Jan Wagner, president of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), “espe-cially as Oracle adds to its family of applications with acquired companies’ products and moves forward with Oracle Fusion Applications. As an independent group, the OAUG can raise issues collectively, speaking with one voice. And Oracle is taking us seriously.”

Influence Product DirectionPart of being heard, of course, is influencing product direction so the products Oracle develops work in your environment, addressing your business challenges. User groups make a profound difference here, ensuring that Oracle products are developed to work in users’ real-world environments as well as in the testing labs.

“User group members represent Oracle’s most active, committed customers,” says Jeb Dasteel, vice president, Oracle Global Customer Programs. “It’s imperative that we listen to their needs and their product input. They pave the way for our entire cus-tomer community to really make a difference in the way we develop products, deliver services, and plan for the future.”

The Higher Education User Group (HEUG) experienced this sort of collaboration with Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise. “The user group community had been hoping there would be larger-scope testing of the product,” explains HEUG President Tom Scott. “Sometimes when we applied code that had ‘passed’ developers’ tests, it didn’t work in our databases—because we had millions of lines of code, which was

“We help each other get the best from our Oracle investments. This sharing of ideas and best practices is what user groups thrive on.”

—Debra Lilley, Deputy Chairman, U.K. and Ireland Oracle User Group

....Debra Lilley

John Matelski

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far beyond what the development team tested for. We convinced Oracle to dramatically enlarge the testing environment to mimic real-world environments, and that made a huge improvement in the product.”

The HEUG carried that testing theme even further when it volunteered to do onsite testing for Oracle of Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Financials suite. “The HEUG wanted to be part of an effort to both get ‘real’ users in front of applications before the products were released and to offer ‘real’ testers to Oracle,” says Scott. The HEUG worked with Oracle to find higher education end users who would spend up to two weeks in Pleasanton, California, testing the software. “This was a real win-win-win,” says Scott. “Oracle got real-world end users in front of the soon-to-be-released software, higher ed got a prerelease look at the software and an opportunity to help the develop-ment team better understand how the applications are used, and the HEUG institutions that provided testers got some serious hands-on exposure to products they would be soon be installing.”

The Oracle Database 11g beta program “is an example of how we help Oracle with its enhancement process,” adds Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) President Ari Kaplan. “It’s a very positive two-way relationship. We’re one of the leaders in coordinating user membership as

part of the Oracle Database 11g beta program. Outside of the beta process, we work with our community to prioritize the enhancements we would like to see Oracle build. So when Oracle spends the time and energy and money to build something, it knows that people will use it to solve real-life and business issues.”

And Oracle couldn’t be happier with the collab-orative, engaged relationship it enjoys with the user groups, says Oracle’s Jesper Andersen. “These cus-tomer groups are dedicated to providing insightful, thoughtful input to help us define the content and

functionality of both near-term and long-term appli-cation releases,” he says.

Oracle user groups come in international, regional, product, industry, and special interest flavors; for users in regions in which American English is not the primary busi-ness language, product localization is obviously a critical issue. For that reason, the EOUC and Asia-Pacific Oracle Usergroup Council (APOUC) have established a new task force focused on localizations. “This multinational task force is working closely with Oracle product management responsible for localizations to optimize the localization develop-ment process, identifying necessary localizations and working to make this important issue easier to handle in the future,” says Wolfgang Scherrer, vice chair for the EOUC and solution architect at the European con-sultancy firm infomArt GmbH.

“Localization is very important here as well,” adds APOUC Localization Committee Cochair Daniel Strassberg, “because the Asia Pacific region is growing at a tremendous pace and into countries that would not have been considered frontline a few years ago. Localization looks at issues of payroll, taxation, and basic local accounting requirements. Our committee is driving the requirements of the user community via a single channel and preventing the wheel from being reinvented again and again. It’s a perfect example of the IOUC/Oracle collaboration.”

Wolfgang Scherrer

Ari Kaplan

“It started with customers driving the events we were running, and that is still the case today.” —Judith Sim, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President, Oracle

. . . .

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o r a c l e o p e n w o r l d a g e n d a a n d s h o w g u i d e N O V E M b E r 2 0 0 7 3 5

Network and Share Oracle user conferences have always been about net-working, and this year’s Oracle OpenWorld conference focuses especially on helping users find and create com-munities of all kinds. It’s not just about Web 2.0 col-laboration and coolness—it is also about making sure Oracle customers have the best avenues for connecting and sharing experiences and ideas.

“With different user groups coming from various regions and countries around the globe, we are able to share knowledge and best practices in a global way,” says Scherrer. “This helps members enormously in today’s business world, where even smaller compa-nies or business units are working worldwide and are faced with questions and requirements they never had before.”

“The EOUC and its members are critical to cus-tomer success,” confirms Alfonso Di Ianni, Oracle senior vice president, EU Enlargement Countries. “In our region, through sharing customer best prac-tices, we can help them leapfrog their competitors, no matter whether they are in small or very large markets.”

For developers, Oracle’s con-stant drive to innovate means that software gets more powerful and flexible all the time, but it also means keeping up. That’s where the Oracle Development Tools User Group (ODTUG) plays a key role. “In the wake of new

products, partnerships, mergers, and methodologies at Oracle, we make it our job to help develop-ers stay on top of these changes, so that developers who have bet their careers on Oracle can con-tinue to be successful,” says John Jeunnette, ODTUG president.

“The results of networking may not be as tangible as some other benefits, but networking is invaluable in learning about how others use their Oracle invest-ment and how they have achieved success,” adds Lilley. “We help each other get the best from our

Oracle investments. This sharing of ideas and best practices is what user groups thrive on.”

Sometimes networking does have very tangible benefits, however. “The City of Orlando was able to resolve some issues we were experiencing with upgrading Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Xe to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.10,” says Matelski by way of example. “By leveraging relationships with other public sector organizations that had similar issues during their upgrades, the City was able to save more than $5,000 in consulting dollars, which made it possible for us to go live on time and within budget.

“Sharing knowledge with people who work on similar practices is helpful for immediate problem solving as well as for engaging vendors in discus-sions related to longer-term solutions,” adds Matelski. “These best practices are not just limited to Oracle products and services but rather extend to the entire ecosystem.”

Look online (oracle.com/technology/community/user_groups) or in Oracle Magazine, and you’ll see an impressive lineup of regional user group meetings for any month of the year. Those regional meetings, says Matelski, are one of the great benefits of belonging to a user group. “By having a regional venue where customers can get together, network, share lessons learned and best practices, and take advantage of edu-cational sessions, organizations can maximize their ownership experience and lower the total cost of own-ership of their IT investments,” he says.

“It started with customers driving the events we were running, and that is still the case today.” —Judith Sim, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President, Oracle

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“Being a part of a user group enables customers to have a direct voice into Oracle and a linkage to other HCM users,” adds Carolyn Hayden-Garner, presi-dent of the Oracle HCM Users Group (OHUG) and executive director of payroll for the Dallas Independent School District. “OHUG’s forum allows users to collaborate and get immediate responses to day-to-day operational issues. The one-stop Web site offered by OHUG directs users to pertinent infor-mation relative to their busi-ness needs and keeps them informed of application releases. Customers who participate in users groups are more likely to be successful during implementa-tion, upgrades, and testing.”

Be the First to KnowUser groups also provide a useful conduit through which Oracle can reach its customer base and, con-versely, through which customers can receive timely and relevant information. “As a customer of any company the size of Oracle, it is often very difficult to keep up with all of the announcements that may affect me,” says Matelski. “By being involved with the Oracle user group community, customers get information directly from Oracle and its trusted user group chan-nels, which is typically more accurate and timely than information received through second- or third-party sources.”

Indeed, the PDC recently piloted a new way of educating users in advance of new releases, Lilley points out. “More than 120 hours’ worth of Webcasts with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 content was available to users three months before the product was generally available,” she says.

When Oracle President Charles Phillips announced Oracle Applications Unlimited at the COLLABORATE 2006 user group conference, Matelski adds, “it was clear that he wanted to show the community how much Oracle appreci-ated the input user groups had contributed.” Oracle also announced Oracle Application Integration Architecture at user group events, a gesture that didn’t go unnoticed by the IOUC.

Oracle OpenWorld: Where You ConnectYou have plenty of opportunities to check out the various user groups this week, beginning with Sunday’s Sixth Annual Oracle Users Forum (Moscone West and the San Francisco Marriott, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m—open to all registered Oracle OpenWorld attendees). Special interest group meetings throughout the day focus on a variety of products and services; technical and best practice user group sessions also are scheduled.

Sunday through Thursday this week, you can network with members of Oracle user groups at the User Groups Pavilion (Moscone West, Lobby Level 2), which is open during exhibition hall hours every day of the conference. Meet representatives from the APOUC, EOUC, HEUG, IOUG, ODTUG, OHUG, OAUG, and Quest International Users Group to ask about the benefits of membership.

And watch for the user group logos in your session guide, indicating user group presentations—more than 160 user group sessions are planned for the week.

“It started with customers driving the events we were running, and that is still the case today,” says Judith Sim, Oracle chief marketing officer and senior vice president. “We have a highly structured approach to collaborating with our 420 independent user groups, customer advisory boards, and key custom-ers around the world. These programs are all about working with our customers to ensure the best- possible experience with Oracle.”

So go—join a user group. Influence products, provide feedback, network, get the inside track on what’s coming from Oracle, and gain unprecedented access to Oracle executives. There’s no time like Oracle OpenWorld to make the move. ■

Leslie Steere is a senior editorial director in Oracle’s Marketing

Communications group.

“Customers who participate in Oracle’s user group community are provided unprecedented access to Oracle executives.”

—John Matelski, Past President, Quest International Users Group

....Carolyn Hayden-Garner

LEARN more about Oracle user groupsoracle.com/technology/community/user_groups/index.htm

VISIT the User Groups Pavilion at Oracle OpenWorldMoscone west, lobby level 2

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