by Pat Neary

In recent weeks DWS participated in a number of JD Edwards user groups across Europe. We attended the JDE Day with the Club Utilisateur de Solutions Oracle in Paris, France; the JDE Update Day with Oracle Benelux User Group (OBUG) in Fort Voordorp, The Netherlands; and JDE18 with the UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) in Liverpool, England.

All three events were well attended, and it was great to meet such a diverse range of people and organisations committed to a future with JD Edwards. We’ve been living in “interesting times” when it comes to Oracle over the past couple of years. The adoption of a continuous delivery model for EnterpriseOne and an accelerated development of the Oracle cloud has seen many companies within the install base reassessing their immediate and longer-term ERP plans.

Lyle Ekdahl, and representatives of his team, made it clear to everyone that the future is bright for companies committed to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne (E1). Oracle continues to invest and extend support for JDE and they pointed out that no other ERP product on the market today is more firmly backed by its author/owner. People can and should be making plans with JDE supporting their businesses long into the future!

Around 6,000 companies worldwide rely upon JD Edwards software. The majority of these use E1, as opposed to World, and close to 50% globally are already on the latest 9.2 release. This is significant because that number is up from 25% just over a year ago. Of those still running older versions of E1, over three quarters say they have plans to upgrade in the next year or so. These stats are tremendous because they show that the community really is big enough to sustain itself, and that the community is pretty vibrant.

I was energized and excited by a lot of what I heard. There seems to be no shortage of innovation, both within E1 itself and in the Oracle Cloud. The challenge for most, I suspect, will be in identifying, selling and delivering IT projects that enable businesses using JDE E1 to innovate.

I had the opportunity to share some of our own thoughts on delivering innovation during a session at the UKOUG. I invite anyone interested in more on that subject to get in touch with me – I’ll be happy to share my presentation with you, and will welcome an opportunity to discuss your strategy and plans for JDE E1.