Difference Between Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) and Oracle Fusion Applications

Diagram to show technology difference between Oracle e-Business suite and Oracle Fusion Applications.

What is Fusion Application

The Oracle Fusion applications offer next-generation enterprise technologies, applications, and services, including Oracle Fusion Applications with Oracle Fusion Middleware which uses latest technologies and best practices from oracle’s customers. Oracle Fusion Applications uses Oracle Database to store and retrieve all transactional and reference data and to store design-time data in repositories.

Oracle Fusion Applications offers industry standards and technologies to transform organizations into next-generation enterprises. Oracle Fusion Applications is a complete suite of modular, service-enabled enterprise applications and is highly adaptable.

Fusion Applications offers a low cost of ownership and results in a faster return on investment by using standard architecture tools for setup and flexible deployment models.

Fusion applications incorporate best practices of business processes from oracle products as well as from Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft, Oracle on Demand, JD Edwards and Siebel. These all together provides enhanced user experience and productivity.

Fusion application uses a unified data model of E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel entities.  

What is New, Not possible and Comparison to Oracle EBS R12

·       No More forms only pages.

·       Fusion Application Development Framework pages replace Oracle Forms and OA Framework.

·       UI has undergone major change to deliver good user experience, rich, innovative and more productive.

·       Web 2 Features have ben embedded with the applications - RSS feeds, social network, tags are possible. Embedded learning - Tutorial, Video and Help.  User activity driven by watch list (also known as work list)

·       UI layout is consistent across the applications in Fusion Apps. There are four regions.

·       Global Region is always present and consistent.

·       Task Region is for task that we need to perform.

·       Location Region is for transaction entry.

·        

·       Contextual Region is for data for local region, if configured.

·       Analytics has been incorporated in UI to provide impact of the actions performed by the user.

·       Interactive Dashboard - Dashboard provides enough information to user action. User can drill down from dashboard to transactions and can perform action/pending action such as resolving error, approval etc. Dash board provides information that is embedded by navigation to quickly perform required action by users.

·       JDeveloper based customization.

·       Needless to say best of breed feature from PeopleSoft, JDE, EBS, Seibel, and Hyperion have been incorporated in Fusion Applications.

·       Embedded business intelligence.

·       Time Zone - In EBS effective date is defaults to system date based on the server time zone. In fusion effective date defaults to system date based on the preferred time zone of the user.

·       User can enter journals in spreadsheet with multiple currencies’. This will eliminate the restriction of entering journals in single currency.

·       Fusion GL is embedded with essbase cube, which is updated whenever journal is posted.

·       There are number of reports tools available in Fusion GL like BI publisher, BI answers and financial reporting.

·       No need to create accounting calendar periods manually

What is not possible in Fusion application

·       No localization and public sector functionalities.

·       Not all R12 functionalities available like manufacturing, call center etc.

·       Focus on horizontal applications not on industry solutions.

·       Data Access set for second and third balancing segments are not supported. Only full ledger, primary and management segments are supported.

·       Journals that are imported and ends with error can't be corrected through journal import correction pages. Need to re-import or to be corrected in interface table through sql.

·       Encumbrance is not possible.

Fusion Vs EBS R12.

·       Date track in EBS is known as Data effectivity in Fusion

·       Operating Unit in EBS is known as Business Unit.

·       Major improvement is there is no need to create multiple COA. Single COA structure in fusion can handle multiple COA. this is the major improvement compare to R12.

·       Reference Data to move configuration across business unit. This is SetID. Application needs to be setup in Fusion with reference data before make it available transactions.

·       Functional setup manager to move configuration across the instances.

·       No more WebADI in Fusion. It is handled by ADFDI in Fusion. This fits with ADF architecture.

Fusion Accounting Hub

Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub (FAH) is a single source for managing all financial requirement as well as Reporting requirements against transaction and provides complete set of accounting tools and access to financial data. FAH receives data from multiple third party transactional system and also from the various Fusion Applications Products [ Sub ledgers ] and applies accounting rules to meet the regulatory reporting and business reporting requirements.

Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub is integrated with Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) as the latter is a powerful consolidation solution to collect other non-financial information. Oracle acquired Hyperion and started using benefits of Hyperion for consolidation, allocation and reporting in Fusion. Hyperion has been leader in financial domain for years together.

Fusion Accounting Hub (FAH) acts as integration platform for centralized accounting and its ability to generate multiple accounting representations (e.g., IFRS, local GAAP, industry, regulatory) for a single sub ledger transaction. FAH is a Next-Generation Financial Analysis for Centralized Reporting. Configurable accounting rules helps to capture transaction information used to create accounting. This feature of Fusion is highly configurable to satisfy capturing of transactions and to create different representation requirement for a company.

Fusion Accounting Hub deals with transactional details and is intended for day-to-day operational reporting and analytics. Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) deals with period-end balances, not transactional details, and is generally not used as an intra-period reporting system.

Components of Fusion Accounting Hub includes-

·   Oracle Fusion Sub ledger Accounting to perform accounting transformations on external system data

·       Oracle Fusion General Ledger

·       Oracle Fusion Financial Reporting Center

·       Integration with Oracle Hyperion Data Management, Fusion Edition for chart of accounts and hierarchy maintenance

·       Applications coexistence integration with the Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle PeopleSoft General Ledgers

·       Integration with Oracle Hyperion Planning, Fusion Edition and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management, Fusion Edition.

How It Works:

The Oracle Fusion Accounting Hub process uses financial data from any or all of the following:

·        Non-Oracle external applications including transaction and reference information

·        Oracle Fusion sub ledgers including sub ledger journals

·        Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle PeopleSoft, and Oracle JD Edwards General Ledgers including account balances

The Accounting Hub process ends with complete reporting and analysis solutions. 

Technology Stack of Fusion Application:

Following table showcase different component which varies from Oracle e-Business Suite to Oracle Fusion applications. 

Component	Oracle e-Business Suite	Oracle Fusion Applications
Database	Oracle Database 10g	Oracle Database 11g
Application Server	Oracle application server 10.1.2 (Forms) Oracle Application server 10.1.3 (OC4J)	Oracle WebLogic
User Interface	Forms, JSPs	Oracle ADF + ADF Java Server Faces
Portal	Oracle Portal	Oracle Webcenter
Data Model	Oracle eBS Data Model	Oracle eBS Data Model + Siebel + PoepleSoft (Trees, Data Effectivity, person Model)
Attachments/Imaging	BLOBs	UCM/Stellant
Workflow/Approval	PL/SQL	BPEL
Reports	Reports (11i), Discoverer	BI Publisher
Analytics	Discoverer	OBIEE
Financial Reporting	Financial Statement Generator	Hyperion
Integration	AIA	AIA + BPEL + More web services
XML Gateway	XML Gateway	BPEL, B2B Adapter

Oracle Fusion Middleware Components: 

Its technology framework includes the following Oracle Fusion Middleware components -

1.      Oracle WebLogic Server- Java application server that helps to deploy multiple applications in a robust and scalable environment.

2.      Oracle WebLogic Communication Services- provides click-to-dial functionality through contextual Actions which further helps users with information and actions.

3.      Oracle Identity Management- automatically manages user access and provides services and interfaces for third party application developments.

4.      Oracle Web Center- combines user interface technologies for building social applications.

5.      Oracle Business Intelligence-offers a complete to generates and delivers analyses for fusion application.

6.      Oracle SOA Suite-comprehensive software for building and deploying service-oriented architecture.

7.      Oracle Application Development Framework- a java framework to simplify application development by minimizing code writing

8.      Oracle JDeveloper- for building service-oriented applications using industry standards 

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): 

Oracle Fusion Application is based on SOA-Services oriented Architecture.

This is a significant technology change adapted by Oracle. SOA Suite, a middleware component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, provides infrastructure component for designing, deploying and managing SOA composite applications. Various services can be created, managed and helps to put together multiple technology components into one SOA composite application.

Oracle Fusion Functional Setup Manager:

Oracle Fusion Functional Setup Manager provides a single user interface for performing all tasks related to Oracle Fusion Applications setup after installation and helps to easily move the setup data between different instances to reduce implementation time.

Below are the benefits of using Oracle Fusion Functional Setup Manager-

1.      Minimizing time to deploy setups and using same and ability to import or export to multiple instances.

2.      Enhancing productivity and reporting functionality.

3.      A single point to set up applications and enables to manage all aspects of functional setup in one interface.

4.      Pre-packaged facilities to export and import setup data consistently and quickly.

5.      Pre-seeded setup templates and reporting.

6.      Options to create custom setup objects.

Users of Oracle Fusion Functional Setup Manager include the application implementation manager, the functional user, and the application implementation consultants. The functional users are responsible for entering and verify the setup data for the functional area. The application implementation consultants are super users who assume the roles of both the application implementation manager and the functional user.

Technology Difference between E-business suite and Fusion Applications

Component	Oracle E-Business Suite	Oracle Fusion Applications
Database	Oracle Database 10G	Oracle Database 11G
Application Server	Oracle Application server 10.1.2	Oracle WebLogic
User Interface	Forms, JSPs	Oracle ADF+ADF Java Server Pages
Portal	Oracle Portal	Oracle Web Center
Data Model	Oracle EBS Data Model	Oracle EBS Data Model + Siebel + PeopleSoft (Trees, Date Effectivity, Person Model)
Attachments / Imaging	BLOBs	Stellant
Workflow / Approval	PL /SQL	BPEL
Reports	Reports (11i), Discoverer	BI Publisher
Analytics	Discoverer	OBIEE
Financial Reporting	Financial Statement Generator	Hyperion
Integration	AIA	AIA +BPEL + more web services
XML Gateway	XML Gateway	BPEL w/B2B Adapter

Fusion Accounting Hub Co-Existence Overview

Key Points

The Standard co-existence functionality transfers balances from R12 to Fusion General Ledger.

The drill through functionality in the Fusion General Ledger journals inquiry page launches the account enquiry page in R12, you must manually enter the period, currency, ledger and accounting range you want to query.

Where access and identity management have not been implemented the user most logon to R12 using their R12 credentials before the account enquiry page is launched.

The Fusion General Ledger includes a live embedded essbase cube which is updated real-time when posting journals in Fusion.

Reporting is done in the Fusion General Ledger where a number of reporting tools are available as BI publisher, BI Answers and Financial Reporting.

Journals which complete in error during the journal import execution on Fusion cannot be corrected using the journal import errors correction page and must be transferred again or updated directly on the interface table using SQL.

Customizing the Drill Behavior

Conclusion: 

Fusion Application is different from EBS. There is no plan from Oracle to come up with R13 version. Next version of Oracle apps is Fusion Application which is new generation ERP as Oracle purchased lots of different companies like PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel etc in last few years and Fusion applications is an effort to integrate all different technology into one single product. Initially Fusion Application is going to be major technology changed ERP and for organization there will be great learning to adopt and incorporate these new technology changes for better management reporting and planning. 

New technology changes are going to provide more flexibility and easy reporting for an organization. Oracle Fusion Applications are service-enabled, enterprise applications that can be easily integrated into a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and now available as software.