C4 Blog by Fishbowl Solutions

Oracle Announces New User Engagement Platform – Fishbowl Solutions Perspective

July 21, 2011 by knegaard

The news on Oracle’s rebranding of all portal and content management products is an exciting and long overdue announcement. For most users, the segmentation of the technology landscape into portal, web content management, and content management has been of less importance than the need to get the right information in the right hands at the right time and expediting this process. Increasingly, users are more and more concerned about things such as presence, getting immediate response to a question, self service, and collaborating on ideas and strategies within the same context from where they’re getting information. The collaborative and social networking capabilities inherent in the WebCenter products reflect the new standards for user interaction.

Today’s world is increasingly focused on immediate access, immediate decisions, and immediate results. And with this recent rebranding and more importantly product alignment, it is our opinion at Fishbowl that Oracle is providing the industry’s most advanced solution to achieving these results – far more than any other competitor in the marketplace today.

In case you missed any of Oracle’s announcements regarding this new product rebranding, we have included some highlights below.

What’s out:

The product name – Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM)
Oracle Enterprise 2.0 product grouping

What’s in:

The product name – WebCenter (see below for component names)
WebCenter components grouped by functionality

Sites: New capability provided by FatWire acquisition, which will provide an all encompassing web experience management solution.

Portal: WebCenter’s core capability made up of these existing products:

Oracle WebCenter Suite
Oracle WebCenter Services
Oracle WebLogic Portal
Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Content: Content management will now be a part of the WebCenter family. Content is made up of the following existing products:

Oracle Universal Content Management
Oracle Universal Records Management
Oracle Imaging and Process Management

Connect: New capability intended for making a more collaborative environment. Connect is made up of the following existing products:

Oracle On Track Communication
Oracle WebCenter Intelligent Collaboration
Oracle WebCenter Real-Time Collaboration

For more information:

Press release: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/431137
Webinar: What’s Next in User Engagement?

Please let us know your thoughts. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding upgrades, integrations, and specific product capabilities.

Posted in 11g, Content Management, Portal, WebCenter | Leave a Comment »

iPad general thoughts..

June 28, 2011 by John Sim

Last night on the couch, whilst watching TV I came across the above add or a very similar one for the iPad.
Now in the UK, iPads & tablets for me are still really classed as a cool gadget & fun toy to play with and until the end of last year I hadn’t seen them being used. Of course you`ll see a CEO carrying one, you or a work colleague may have one but if you’re in the UK the likely hood that you’ll be given one for work or have a business case to justify one is probably very rare..
(If not please tell me I’d love to know how you use yours).

In the US however it seems to be a completely different story.
All the meetings I attend I see at least 5 iPads come out.. (Yes, there is poor me with the classic notepad). And these people are actually using them to type, hand-write, or dictate notes, share and brainstorm ideas, share agendas, access documents. It’s not only in meetings but I’ve also seen a number of corporations like Medtronic invest in iPads; enabling their employees to gain fast access to documents & presentations securely whilst on the move.

Over the last couple of months I have seen a switch in attitude in the UK with the iPad well not only iPad but mobility on a whole and a need for cross device compliant application – it will be interesting to see how the market changes and to see how prevalent ipads/tablets will be within business. Fishbowl Solutions are already ahead of the competition investing time into their mobility solutions for E2.0 ECM, WebCenter and although I can see the majority of the market is in the US it is coming to EMEA and the rest of the world.

If you’re interested in Mobility solutions and what Fishbowl has to offer get in touch.

Posted in Content Management, Enterprise 2.0, Integrations, Mobile, UCM, UX, WCM, Web 2.0, WebCenter | 1 Comment »

Content in the Enterprise – Still Searching? Start Finding.

June 27, 2011 by Fishbowl Solutions

Fishbowl Solutions recently conducted a webinar in which we discussed our Google Search Appliance (GSA) Connector for Oracle Universal Content Management (Oracle UCM). We had a great turnout for the event with over 100 registrants and 80 attendees. The high-level of interest made it apparent to us that enterprise search continues to be an issue within organizations. These issues are typically user-driven, and the frustrations center around not being able to quickly and easily find the information they need to do their jobs. However, the bigger and more concerning issue is the inability for users to find information in those systems where they have been directed to store their documents, spreadsheets, images, PDFs, and any other content resulting from their job tasks. Those systems where contribution is relatively easy, but consumption can be arduous, and well, frustrating. Those systems are Enterprise Content Management systems.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems provide the most value when content can be easily found, accessed, and shared from within them. Devoid of these traits however, users start storing content on their desktops, external storage devices, file shares and the like. Quite often, this leads to outright ECM system avoidance, which can quickly manifest into decreased collaboration and knowledge sharing as well as increased security concerns. So frankly, this all starts with search. If the native or 3^rd-party search system does not perform as users expect, providing them with accurate, relevant search results and links to content items they know exist in the system, avoidance will indeed ensue and widespread ECM adoption will not be achieved.

When it comes to search, one size does definitely not fit all. There are currently over 12 enterprise search systems on the market today, and some of these are specialized offerings that fit within specific verticals. All ECM systems include some level of search functionality, but 3^rd-party vendors like Google have found that ECM users want other options. Take Oracle UCM for example. It comes with native search capabilities provided by OracleTextSearch, which leverages the powerful Oracle 11g database. However, to achieve the desired level of satisfaction, organizations may find that a lot of administration is necessary to manage the index of the database. Furthermore, the user experience leaves a little to be desired. So, what are organizations looking for when it comes to the search functionality within Oracle UCM? Based on the questions asked and the follow up conversations we had, these 4 qualities were most important:

Easy to use – does not required a skilled knowledge worker to perform searches
Results are accurate and relevant
Customizable or can be “tuned” to meet organizational needs (Single-Sign-On integration, etc.)
Limited administration

The Google Search Appliance delivers on all of these and more. It truly takes the power of Google.com and brings it within the firewall, providing organizations with the world’s most popular search engine for searching content across their websites, intranets, portals and file servers. Fishbowl’s GSA Connector for Oracle UCM extends these capabilities to UCM users by providing them with an alternative for searching the content server and any UCM-based website. Fishbowl Solutions is ready to help your organization stop searching for information and start finding it. We offer a GSA Connector Jumpstart Package which includes the GSA Connector software component plus 40 hours of consulting services. Fishbowl is also a Google Enterprise Partner, so we can provide you with the GSA device and help you install, configure, and start using it.

For more information, please explore the following GSA Connector pages on Fishbowl’s website:

You can also contact us directly at 952-465-3426 or sales@fishbowlsolutions.com.

Posted in 11g, Content Management, Enterprise Search, Integrations, tips, UCM | 2 Comments »

Oracle Apps Official User Experience site.

June 27, 2011 by John Sim

Oracle Applications User Experience

Sometimes sites just don’t get enough exposure or I just miss them with the billion and one other sites out there.

Well this one is one to take note of!
We all know Microsoft throws money into UI/UX and that Oracle have never really invested a penny until the last couple of years and still they have taken their sweet time with delivering us an improved interface and better experience. But now there seems to be a real drive within the Oracle teams I’ve spoken with in the last year; who are reaching out to partners like Fishbowl Solutions to review their E2.0 Suite to see what makes them stand ahead of the crowd.

There are also new apps being released like onTrack; which I have to say has had the biggest impact for me in terms of its interface and usability, great work guys.

I’m really looking forward to see what the next major releases bring us.

Posted in 11g, Labs, UX | Leave a Comment »