San Francisco - Oracle OpenWorld - October 2 - 6

Packing up and heading off to SFO for OpenWorld 2011

Looking forward to working alongside the JD Edwards Denver team and attending the re introduction of the 'Hand on Labs' (HOL) a fantastic way to get to touch and play with the new applications and technologies. I'm expecting more information on the upcoming EnterpriseOne 9.1 release due in 2012 and the mobile application technology for JD Edwards will be a highlight. 

The OpenWorld event is also a fantastic opportunity to network with industry peers and discuss the success stories while also sharing the challenges. Face to face time with Oracle Senior Execs provides the opportunity to ask the hard questions.

Stay tuned for an update on my return or stay in touch on Twitter @JirehJDE 

Mark Elley, Jireh's Managing Director, is in Orlando Florida for the annual Collab conference for the Oracle Applications community. A significant announcement that will be of interest to our JD Edwards customers is that Oracle has set a new Premier Support Timeline for the latest JDE releases.

In summary, EnterpriseOne release 9.0 Update 2 will now be treated as a major release. This means that Premier Support for this release will run until November 2015, not the earlier date of September 2013 which applies to 9.0 and 9.0 Update 1. A similar extension applies to World release A9.2 Update 1 .

This is a very encouraging response from Oracle to customer feedback that upgrades had been hard to justify with the previous Premier Support windows for the current releases.

The full text of the Oracle's announcement describes it as follows:

• "To help customers accelerate the value of their Oracle solutions, Oracle today announced that it has set a new start date of Oracle Premier Support for the latest releases of Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and Oracle’s JD Edwards World. 
• By setting the Oracle Premier Support timeline for Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 Update 2 and Oracle's JD Edwards World A9.2 Update 1 to their general availability dates, Oracle is giving customers more flexibility in their upgrade planning. 
• Premier Support for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 9.0 Update 2 will begin November 2010 and end November 2015, while Premier Support for JD Edwards World A9.2 Update 1 will now run from May 2010 to May 2015. 
• The changes to the support timeline will allow JD Edwards customers to begin upgrades to the current versions immediately and enjoy Premier Support until 2015 without incurring additional fees."

In one sense we are pleased to know that as far we can ascertain our team and customers in Christchurch are OK at a personal level following yesterday's devastating earthquake, although they have much to deal with in the coming days, weeks and months ... but like them we are deeply saddened for what has happened to their city, and for those who have suffered, or have loved ones who have suffered, injury death or other loss.

We will continue to keep in touch with our customers and do what we can to lessen the load of worrying about their systems so they can focus on family, friends, home, etc.  Some customer systems only support the Christchurch region so are less critical but some of our customers support other regions with systems running out of Christchurch so these will naturally be our priority when our customers are ready for us to act.

You can contact the Jireh team via our Contact form, or Mark on his mobile (027 672 5126), or Kaz on his mobile (027 672 5125), or Gavin on his mobile (021 428 059).

However, we note that Telecom have again this morning repeated their request for people to limit calls within New Zealand (not just Christchurch) and to TXT unless a call is really necessary.

Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with those in and around Christchurch, and those with loved ones in and around Christchurch.

(cross-posted from Jireh News)