OpenWorld 2009 in Retrospect

Oracle OpenWorld is over for another year and the streets of San Francisco will be getting back to normal (even after Tuesday's record rainfall). After attending a number of sessions, demos and meetings during the week its worth asking what the 'take away' is for Life Sciences companies.

The first is the growing move of Oracle into the hardware space and Larry Ellison's clear challenge to IBM. IBM has worked closely with Oracle in the past but Oracle's acquisitions in the hardware space has now created a new competitive dynamic. For those at OpenWorld for the technology the promise of Sun and Oracle getting together and this years announcements around Exadata were creating considerable excitement for companies with large data warehouses. For those Life Sciences companies looking to build clinical data warehouses, sales and marketing analytics data marts etc the promise of improved performance at lower cost appeared to be quite compelling.

In the short term there will be considerable opportunities to leverage this in R&D and the promise of extending this to applications databases is also quite compelling. Once the Sun deal receives final regulatory approval it looks like we'll see the new Oracle changing the landscape here.

The other thing on the technology side was the breadth of technology and middleware now available from one vendor (Oracle's demo grounds seem to get bigger every year). There is still a way to go in terms of integrating all of this but Oracle appears to have made a promising start and a number of clients I spoke to were welcoming the move that Oracle is making in at least some (larger) accounts, to help Enterprise Architects navigate their way through this maze of technology.

From my perspective part of that challenge is to put that technology into an appropriate business context and Oracle will almost certainly continue to struggle to field specialists in both the technology and industry expertise. I've certainly known cases where Oracle's own pre-sales people have been aware of Life Sciences functionality that is embedded in some of the technology products (e.g. DICOM support and BLAST searches in the database) and I suspect that's where the focus on Partner Specialization will come into play and partners like Business & Decision will continue to help client's to understand how to plan and deploy appropriate technologies in support of business requirements (see Sunday's Blog).

On the application side it was a chance to see a number of new applications in the Life Sciences industry. This included a number of acquisitions (e.g. Argus from Relsys for pharmacovigilance, the latest PLM acquisitions for pharmaceuticals) as well as new products from Oracle such as Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager and industry specific flavors of broader applications e.g. Siebel CRM for Life Sciences.

Industry focus is clearly one key dimension for Oracle and although there will always be more to do (including development work with Partners) Oracle appears to be extending its lead over traditional rival SAP and relative newcomer Microsoft. While there will continue to be best of breed solutions, Oracles ability to integrate via Fusion Middleware and to continue to acquire will see Oracle expand the functional footprint in Life Sciences and other key industries.

On the application front it appears to be evolution rather than revolution and systems integration via middleware was getting a lot of attention. Life Sciences companies with any sort of Oracle Applications footprint will really need to get up to speed with Fusion Middleware if they are looking to integrate and automate business processes.

In summary, OpenWorld 2009 was perhaps a little quieter than last year but there was even more to see and discuss. Despite financial uncertainty over the past year the I world certainly hasn't stood still and Life Sciences companies looking to move forward with projects would certainly have found it an interesting and useful week.

Product Lifecycle Managament Integration in Life Sciences

Sitting in on some of the conference session yesterday, looking at interfacing Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, it was quite obvious that not all PLM solutions are created equal.

PLM is one area where Oracle has grown strong through acquisition, initially by acquiring Agile. This brings arguably the best PLM solution for medical devices companies - what many still know as the Agile A9 product. Oracle also had a process version but is mainly used in food and beverage and although there is some good process functionality it was not specialized enough to manage the drug development lifecycle.

Then in June this year Oracle announced its intention to purchase the IP of Conformia, bringing a strong product to manage the drug development lifecycle into their portfolio, with the intention to integrate this into the Agile product line.

This will provide large Life Sciences companies first rate products for either medical device development and design management or for managing the drug discovery and development process. This will also provide some flexibility to manage the lifecycle of products that are manufactured using either discrete or process manufacturing operations.

Although many take a simplistic view, the world isn't as simple as medical devices companies use discrete manufacturing and pharmaceuticals uses process. In some cases medical devices use batch manufacturing and pharmaceuticals need discrete. At the PLM level, the medical device Quality System Regulations have specific requirements for device development which Agile A9 meets very well, but not so Conformia.

Back to the topic of interfaces: While Oracle is doing a good job in developing standard process integrations between A9 and their core ERP systems (E-Business Suite and JDEdwards, using AIA PIPs), there is a growing realization that the combination of regulatory requirements for managing the various lifecycles of devices or drugs and discrete or process manufacturing means that there will need to be complete flexibility to interface either of the two 'flavors' of PLM to either discrete or process manufacturing solutions in Oracle's own (and competitors such as SAP) ERP systems.

Oracle's AIA framework certainly provides that opportunity and is no doubt the easiest way to develop such integrations. Indeed, Oracle has a roadmap to develop such Process Integration Packs, but it will be a while yet until the Conformia product is integrated into Agile and the AIA PIPs developed.

From a business perspective this means that Life Sciences companies looking to acquire PLM solutions (not only from Oracle) really need to understand:

• The nature of their product development lifecycle
• The regulatory requirements which govern their PLM processes (depending on device class or drug profile)
• The nature of their manufacturing process - discrete, process or possibly mixed mode for some product lines
• Exactly how they want to integrate their PLM systems to their manufacturing systems from a business process perspective

It is this that will drive the functional requirements of their interface and determine whether an out-of-the-box integration will deliver what is needed, or whether integration tools will be needed to develop some customer elements of the interface.

On a positive note, for Life Sciences customers who have taken the step to integrate their PLM and ERP systems and processes, there is a good return on investment both in terms of reducing costs and helping maintain compliance through the design, development and introduction of new products and new versions of products. With respect to this latter point, with regulatory authorities now looking at risks introducing during new product introduction (or scale up) it is good news that these concerns can be addressed at the same time these processes are made more efficient.

Oracle OpenWorld – Partner Specialization

I'm here in San Francisco at Oracle's OpenWorld event (Sunday 1th to Thursday 1th October).

The big message at the today’s Partner sessions was 'Specialized. Recognized by Oracle. Preferred by Customers.'
This means that under the new Partner program the value of more specialized partners will be more highly valued by Oracle, specialized both in terms of technology and industry.

This is reflecting a broader industry trend in IT as customers and software vendors alike start to really understand the value of specialists in terms of delivering business value, but in the Life Sciences industry the value of suppliers who understand the industry and the specific sector - pharmaceutical, medical device, biotech etc - has largely always been valued.

Oracle, like other major software vendors, is realizing that they can no longer maintain the breadth of technology and industry skills themselves and that they need more specialized Partners to get the best out of their software and deliver successful solutions.

For niche or 'boutique' players like Business & Decision this is good news - with just under 3,000 consultants we cannot compete with the biggest System Integrators - but with our focus on specific solutions within the Life Sciences sector a broader recognition of the value of Specialization is good news.

It should also be good news for prospective clients looking for confirmation that they are selecting the right supplier. When Oracle and other software vendors are really ready to recommend and stand behind specialized Partners (recommending the best and not just the biggest) it should make the job of supplier assessment so much easier.