Part 1 of 5 By Lyle Ekdahl: JDE 5G – What is it, and do I even care?
By Kem Butller-Oracle on Jun 16, 2014
Part 1 of 5
JDE 5G – What is it, and do I even care?
If you attended Quest Collaborate 2014 this year and caught the JD Edwards keynote session, you heard the term JDE 5G used for the first time in a public forum. I used the term to describe JD Edwards’ approach to the market, our products and our organizational processes. The fact is that we are at the genesis of Oracle’s JD Edwards’ fifth generation!
So what are the 5 generations you ask?
Generations 1 through 5 mirror the major corporate stages and product changes that we have gone through during our 37 + year history. Let’s review them:
1G – JD Edwards as an independent software company from inception through to a publically traded company on the stock exchange (Ok I’ll admit this is a very long generation, but stay with me.)
2G – JD Edwards as a set of product lines after acquisition by PeopleSoft (by contrast a short generation)
3G –JD Edwards product division in its early days after being acquired by Oracle
4G – Game changing Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and Oracle’s JD Edwards World software releases 9.x introduced to the market
5G – Is right NOW!
With that brief review of our history, what’s really important, what really matters to you is the NOW of it. Because right now disruptive technologies are dramatically changing business, and we plan to lead in the delivery of next generation ERP solutions that leverage technology to position your business for success and leadership.
So what’s different now? If you really think about it, in many ways the processes you have used in business have remained pretty static, and we have applied technology to those stable processes over many years (since the beginning of the industrial revolution). The business you were in and the processes did not dramatically change because of technology.
What has changed in the recent past is core ERP has become a commoditized offering, with some innovations in the areas of:
• Targeted big data applications and related analytics• Select mobile apps on select mobile devices• Limited real time collaboration with employees & trading partners• Improved user experience• IT beginning to support BYOD• Organizations embracing cloud
JD Edwards has demonstrated that we can and do support these innovations of modern ERP – and often, we are leading and innovating well ahead of the crowd.
We are also acutely aware of the new advances in technology and the implications for us. In response, we have formulated our 5th generation vision for JD Edwards.
I envision the future transformation of the current state of ERP where technology will literally shape the future of business in new and transformative ways. This future state is the dynamic intersection of processes technology, product and people in ways not possible before the digital overdrive era that we are entering.
How so you ask? Traditionally technology has been layered on top of existing business processes to speed them up and enable them linearly. In 5G, technology, processes, product and people truly become entwined, more systemically……to enable never before realized benefits and emergent value.
The new technologies combined with a new generation of workers have and will continue to drive dramatic changes, completely reshaping how we interact, and more importantly ENGAGE with our employees, partners and customers.
Part 2 of this series will explore in more detail what business requirements 5G will address and what the resulting world might look like.
