As this was my first conference with Circular Edge, I had a lot to learn and took advantage of my conference pass by attending the JD Edwards keynote and subsequent roadmap session. Here is what I learned, along with some key themes that resonated throughout the week.

#YouMakeItHappen

As the title of the JD Edwards keynote and official hashtag for JD Edwards at COLLABORATE, #YouMakeItHappen had a lot of us asking what are we making happen? We found out in the keynote, which focused on how customers are leveraging the 9.2 framework to deliver innovative solutions in their organizations.

“The real value is in our business processes and offloading to the machines what machines can do better than humans.” – Lyle Ekdahl

Through live demos, Lyle Ekdahl and the JD Edwards product team showcased several of these innovations and how available 9.2 features can be leveraged to automate business processes. 

Scenarios included:

• Bringing together a user’s tasks into one place using User-Defined Objects (Online Work Orders)
• Sending data captured and stored in JDE to a 3rd party Cloud-based regulatory reporting service (Regulatory Reporting & Compliance)
• Entering quality test results into JDE using Orchestrator and Notifications (Quality Test Automation)
• Automating decision-making processes using predefined rules and IoT devices (Automated Field Operations)
• Delivering notifications to users even when not signed in to EnterpriseOne (Notifications)
• Automating procure-to-pay processes using Orchestrations, Notifications and Content and Experience Cloud (Procure-to-Pay Automation)
• Accessing data and acting upon it using chatbots as components of UX One Landing Pages (Intelligent Chatbot)

Also, Edward the wolf pup made his return appearance as Karen Brown’s assistant in the Chatbot demo! (recognize him from #C17LV?) #WhereIsEdward

Ultimately, I found it interesting and impressive that the innovations were no code/low code and were created by citizen developers like us.

Continuous Innovation

After seeing citizen developer solutions firsthand, I was excited to hear about future planned enhancements that will make JD Edwards even better – and judging by the packed room, so was the rest of the community.

Bob Monahan and Gary Grieshaber kicked off the roadmap session by reviewing recent 9.2 enhancements and reiterating support for 9.2 to at least 2028. Both spoke on Oracle’s Continuous Delivery strategy of delivering smaller updates on a more frequent basis and how this strategy reduces costly, disruptive upgrades for customers.

Next, we explored key planned and research highlights across the 9.2 code line…

The roadmap session ended with an overview on the current initiatives from JD Edwards Labs. Some of the most exciting projects include:

• Adaptive Intelligence (Modeling & Prediction, Big Data, Machine Learning, Decision-Making)
• Chatbots (Natural Language, AI-Powered Conversations, Robotic Process Automation)
• Cloud DevOps (Infrastructure as Code, Automated Rapid Provisioning, Resilient Deployments, Elastic Scale Up/Down)
• Blockchain (Permission Distributed Ledger, Smart Contracts, Business Process Compression)

All the talk about continuous innovation inspired me to think about how Circular Edge applies this theme in our work.

One of our newest flagship products, AtomIQ, is a no code/low code process automation tool for JD Edwards, for which we presented a session. Check out part 2 of my recap to learn more about CE product and service innovations that are available to support your success.

Resources:

JD Edwards Keynote Presentation

JD Edwards Keynote Case Studies

JD Edwards Keynote Recording

JD Edwards Announcement (April 2018)

JD Edwards Roadmap Presentation

Circular Edge at COLLABORATE 18