Fusion Middleware Patchset 5 in the Wild

Oracle slipped out the fifth patchset release for the Fusion Middleware products during the middle of the night on the 22nd of February.  For the most part things will be very familiar to longtime users.  One of the most visible changes is that the branding has caught up with the software.  Oracle Content Server is now Webcenter Content,  Imaging and Process Management is now Webcenter Imaging.  It feels like an end of an era!

ImageSource has a customer that was entering an upgrade project for their Fusion Middleware based solution.  After two surprisingly easy days I got their development and test environments up and running with this new release.  Oracle has stated this released isn’t focused on adding lots of new features but they have rolled up a lot of bug fixes and patches that previously had to be installed separately into this release.  This is by far the best release of this platform ever.

That’s not to say Oracle didn’t sneak in some great new features.  Folks who haven’t got to try out the Oracle Business Process Management feature back in PR4 will find huge improvements in this release.  One of the Webcenter Imaging additions I appreciate is a built-in configuration editor for any Oracle solution accelerators installed in the environment.  Most folks probably haven’t had to work with those much but as one of the few who have let me tell you it’s a breath of fresh air to start seeing official Oracle tooling support and documentation for those things.

The folks at AMIS have a good write up with lots of reference links and general impressions of the release.  All in all,  I’m really excited to see what the future brings.  Oracle has come a long way since the initial release of the 11g platform as a whole.  Even from PS2 this seems like lightyears ahead.

Les Harris
Systems Engineer
ImageSource, Inc.

IPM 10g is Going Away, Now What?

Earlier this month ImageSource hosted our annual ECM conference Nexus.  I had the chance to meet with many of our customers and have some really great conversations.  Many of these folks are running IPM 10g as a core component of their enterprise and since that product is being end of life’d they are taking a long hard look at their installations.  Everyone wanted to know what options they had and to talk about the best way for them to move forward.  The 11g version of IPM was frequently a core topic of conversation and everybody wanted to hear how to get from here to there.

This turns out to be a hard question to answer! There is no single bullet-proof solution that you can just pull the trigger on and have everything completed.  (Sorry, we’re still working on the ILINX® Magic Wand)   Depending on your environment and your goals there are different considerations.  Let’s take a look at a few common scenarios.

IPM 10g, Imaging Only

So in your environment you’re using IPM to store and retrieve images.  You’re not using workflow, you don’t have many complex integrations, IPM is basically acting solely as a repository.  You are in a great position for an upgrade to IPM 11g.  Unlike folks with workflows and complex integrations there is a clear and defined upgrade path for an Imaging-only IPM 10g system.  Oracle provides a migration tool that performs the actual transfer of documents (with annotations!) from 10g to 11g.  The upgrade is mostly a matter of setting the applications and searches up in 11g and letting this tool move the content over.

IPM 10g, Process

Your environment utilizes workflows to streamline your business processes.  All your content can be moved over no problem as described previously in the Imaging-only section but what about all these workflows?  Sadly there is no way to directly move these from 10g to 11g.  11g workflows utilizes technologies like BPM and BPEL which are architecturally far-removed from the Process engine in 10g.

Not all is lost however.  While not being built on the same technology, there is a strong mapping between the older 10g workflow and 11g workflow (especially when using BPM).  The workflows won’t have to be redesigned just reimplemented.  Much of the work in creating workflow is capturing the business process in the first place, implementing the design is in many ways easier.  Plus, this is a great time to take a look at your workflows and see which ones you are still using and which ones could do with some updates.  IPM 11g offers much more advanced workflow functionality and this is also the perfect time to add modern workflow features into your own workflows.

I’ve talked a great deal at Nexus and with customers about the benefits of 11g workflow.  If you’d like to learn more leave a comment or email me and we can talk about some of the features that can really add alot of value to your workflow business process.

Migration to Another Platform

Lastly since the switch to 11g is more of a migration rather than an upgrade now is a time to consider implementing other systems.  Many of our current IPM 10g customers are looking at a product of ours called ILINX Content Store as a replacement option.  IPM 11g is really geared towards the enterprise and everything from server hardware to licensing is based on that assumption.  But if you are using IPM 10g at a departmental level, or just as an imaging repository 11g is in many ways overkill for your needs.

ILINX Content Store is focused on easy and effective content management  with strong Microsoft Windows integration.  It’s built on modern technologies and  encapsulates our years of experience in the ECM space to provide an intuitive, easy to use and administer solution.  It is a natural replacement for an imaging only IPM 10g system and most end-users find Content Store’s user experience easier and just as powerful.

If you’re using a lot of workflow though your options drift back towards the enterprise.  Many of our customers are making Sharepoint a core component of their workflow strategy.  We are also exploring IBM’s P8 family of products (which live in their FileNet umbrella).

Wrapping Up

These three scenarios are the ones that I see come up again and again.  But every environment is different.  Your needs and requirements are going to be different.  If you have further questions I encourage you to leave a comment or email me and we can have a great discussion about where you are today and where you want to be.

Les Harris
Systems Engineer
ImageSource, Inc.

Oracle Content Management – IPM 11g Links

Looking for some useful links to information about installing Oracle IPM 11g?  We have been performing successful Oracle IPM 11g implementations and will be providing useful information, as well as, tips and tricks on this blog.

Here are the main links that have been leveraging for some valuable information related to this next generation ECM Suite:

Oracle Content Management Description	URL
Overview	http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/content-management/overview/index.html
Downloads	http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/content-management/downloads/index.html
Documentation	http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/content-management/documentation/index.html
UCM 11g Downloads	http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/content-management/downloads/index-085241.html
IPM 11g Downloads	http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/content-management/downloads/index-ipm-088963.html

Ryan Keller

ImageSource, Inc.

Nexus 2010

I recently attended the Technology conference put on by my company. Nexus®, as it is dubbed, is where we try to bring in all the local and national minds in our ECM space together. On the vendor side we had both hardware and software manufacturers represented. On the standards side we had credits offered for PMI, ARMA, AHIMA, and IAPP just by attending. There was pre-conference training on  Oracle I/PM 11g, a risk management course, and an AIIM ECMp course. For the user community we had attendees from Fortune 50 companies  down to small government agencies and everything in between. Sounds great right? It was.

As with any conference, you have to make it to the break out session that relate to you, and make connections with people that you can relate to. The latter was easy of course, we are all living and breathing the ECM world. Even if your content is different, the pain points are nearly always the same. It’s great to connect with others and find out their resolutions to similar issues, their approach to common problems, and to hear their success stories. Besides giving a presentation on our product ILINX® Integrate (something I have blogged about in the past), I also attended sessions on advanced document capture, ILINX Content Store, Oracle I/PM, and sessions on project management.

The breakout sessions had real value for me. The sharing of knowledge is essentially what Nexus is all about and the break outs are core to that. In years past, I have attended Nexus but allowed myself to do project work or provide technical support for the conference itself during the breakout sessions. This year I made it a point to attend as many sessions as possible and only missed two. I am confident I took the right approach.

I attended Shon Mueller’s presentation on advanced capture solutions and it was great. He was dynamic and brought a wealth of experience in his years at Kofax, ImagesSource, and other ECM technology companies. Jon Sutherland’s presentation on ILINX Content Store was informative for me as well. As a system’s engineer that’s busy in the field I haven’t had as much time as would like to work with our latest product offering. ILINX Content Store is a real solution for content management and I am quite confident we will see and hear more about it. Les Harris’ session on upgrading to Oracle I/PM 11g was an eye opener. I have worked extensively with the I/PM product line for many years and the new product accomplishes the same functions as all previous versions, but with an entirely new architecture. For those planning on sticking with the product it is time to start planning your upgrade path now. I also attended a session on project management in which Dennis Brooke discussed how to use Web 2.0 technologies to streamline project management and enhance project morale. The session sparked lots of questions form the audience and I could see the wheels turning as people thought how they could use these ideas in their own corporate structure. I worked with Dennis for many years and it was great to hear about some of the lessons learned and successes.

I have linked to all the presentations, please feel free to review them and all the other’s on the Nexus site.  All in all Nexus 2010 was a success and I can’t wait to see what ImageSource puts together for next year.

  

Oracle IPM 11g Released!

For those of you who have not heard Oracle has released the next generation of their Enterprise Content Management Software, Imaging and Process Management (IPM) 11g.  This version is the first major step that Oracle has taken to tightly integrate the product into Oracle’s overall software architecture…IPM 11g has been completely overhauled to be part of the Fusion Middleware (FMW) tech stack.  From the ECM perspective, Oracle now has a complete seamlessly integrated end to end offering that includes the storage repository, document management, business process management, library services, web publishing, records management, reporting/monitoring and application integration.  This creates many advantages for customers that use or plan to use other Oracle products in their workplace, as well as, integrating and leveraging existing investments in non-Oracle software.

I have been working as a Systems Engineer and Project Manager with the IPM software base for over 8 years, through the Stellent IBPM acquisition, all the way back to the Optika Acorde and eMedia days.  A couple major differences in implementing the latest Oracle 11g version are the requirements for Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM) for the storage repository and Oracle WebLogic Server for the application/web server.  I look at both of these requirements in a positive light.  UCM and WebLogic Server are powerful robust products that provide standard approaches to managing content storage and applications, respectively, from the FMW perspective.  With that said, if you do not have experience with either UCM or WebLogic, you will need to get up to speed with them to succeed in an IPM implementation.  Neither of these products can be installed through the “Next, Next, Next, Finished!” approach, so careful upfront planning and architecting is required to ensure a successful implementation. 

Let’s talk about the new user interface a little bit.  Oracle has followed suit with the rest of the major players in the ECM world by creating a complete web based interface for performing all administrative and end user functions.  This makes administration duties of the system much easier than in past versions that require administration to be done through the “thick” client.  Also, by moving to the WebLogic Server the full featured web interface is now much more browser agnostic than in the past.  The image viewer comes in two flavors that support over 400 file formats; a zero footprint view only version and the a re-written java applet that allows for full annotations, annotation security, and server based conversion/rendering for access speed.  The following are a couple of screen captures of the user interface from IPM 11g:

The Client Interface

The Zero Footprint Viewer

The Java Applet Viewer

Lastly, I would like to touch on a feature that is often overlooked when implementing ECM solutions, application integration. Oracle has done a great job in IPM 11g to provide some powerful capabilities for leveraging investments into Oracle and non-Oracle applications through integration.  For a process where users are assigning metadata to a record in their business application, through application integration this data can be pushed to and associated with the document stored in IPM 11g. Another example of integration would be the image enablement of a business application.  In this case a user could be accessing records in their ERP system a hotkey, menu item, or button in the application screen can retrieve and display the document from IPM without the user ever having to leave their business application.  These capabilities can create significant efficiencies in an organization through increased user productivity, the reduction of training and the simplification of support and administration. 

All in all I see the changes that Oracle made in IPM 11g as great additions to an already strong platform.  Oracle has a product that not only adheres to their architecture model, but also will provide many benefits to the customers that use it.  Stay tuned to this blog for more information related to our experiences with Oracle IPM 11g.

Ryan Keller

Project Manager

ImageSource, Inc.