With the anticipated releases of the first products based upon Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.3.0.5.0 starting to appear soon, the first set of whitepapers have to been updated to reflect new functionality, updated functionality and experiences from the field and our Oracle Utilities cloud implementations.

The following whitepapers have been updated and are now available from My Oracle Support:

• ConfigTools Best Practices (Doc Id: 1929040.1) - This has been updated with the latest advice from our implementations and cloud teams. There are a few new sections around Groovy and a new section which highlights the ability to write batch programs using the Plug-In Batch architecture. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework 4.3.0.5.0, we add the capability to implement File Import functionality using Groovy in our Plug-In Batch. We provide a mechanism to support Delimited, Fixed or XML based files within the algorithms. Samples of each are supplied in the product.
• Identity Management Suite Integration (Doc Id: 1375600.1) - This whitepaper has been greatly simplified to reflect the latest Oracle Identity Management Suite changes and the newer interface that has been migrated from XAI to IWS. The new interface as two new algorithms which are used in our cloud implementations and are now part of the F1-IDMUser object supplied with the product.
  • Generation of Authorization Identifier - The F1-IDMUser object now supports the ability to generate the unique authorization identifier (the 8 character one) if the identifier is not provisioned from Oracle Identity Manager itself. This provides some flexibility of where this identifier can be provisioned as part of the Oracle Identity Manager solution. In the past the only place this was available was within Oracle Identity Manager itself. This enhancement means that the user can be provisioned from Oracle Identity Manager or part of the Identity Management interface to Oracle Utilities Application Framework.
  • Duplication of User now supported within interface - In past releases the use of template users was a common way of quickly provisioning users. This release also allows the duplication function within the User Object to be used in isolation or in conjunction with template users for more flexible options in provisioning. If this method is used, a characteristic is added to the duplicated user to indicate it was duplicated from another user (for auditing purposes).

As we get closer to release of products using Oracle Utilities Application Framework 4.3.0.5.0 you will see more and more updated whitepapers to reflect the new and improved changes in the releases.

In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.3.0.1.0, we introduced the new Oracle help engine to provide a better online help experience for online users. Due to a conflict in common libraries a series of patches have been released to ensure the correct instances of the libraries are used for a number of Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.3.x releases. The patches outlined below allow for the Oracle Help engine to be continued to be used with the correct libraries.

Note: These patches apply to Oracle WebLogic 12.x installations only.

The following patches, available from My Oracle Support, apply to the following releases:

These patches migrate the online help to use the Thin Client libraries. Customers on Oracle Weblogic 12.2 should apply 27112347 - OPTIONAL SPECIAL PATCH FOR REMOVAL OF OHW THICK CLIENT JAR FILES-4.3 SP1,2,3,4 available from My Oracle Support.

The patches apply in the following ways:

• If you are on Oracle WebLogic 12.1.3, the patch will ensure the correct Oracle Help libraries are used.
• If you are on Oracle WebLogic 12.2.1, the patch will replace the default libraries with the thin client libraries. The additional patch (27112347) outlined above will cleanup any conflicted libraries.

Customers on earlier versions of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework do not need to apply the above patches. Customers on Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.3.0.5.0 and above, do not need to apply these patches as it is already included in those releases.

Welcome to 2018 for the ShortenSpot readers. This year is looking like another exciting year for the Oracle Utilities Application Framework and a new direction for the blog overall. In the past the blog has been a mixture of announcements and some advice with examples. Whilst it will still provide important technical announcements, this year we plan to have lots and lots of exciting advice with lots of example code to illustrate some amazing features you can use in the cloud, hybrid and on-premise implementations to inspire you to use the facilities provided to you.

This year we also will be doing a major refit to all the whitepapers including rationalizing the number of them (it was fast approaching 50 at one stage) and making them more relevant with more examples. This will also remove the duplication those whitepapers have with the online documentation which is now the main source of information for advice for implementations. The whitepapers will act as more supplemental materials and complementary to the online documentation.

The next few months are the busy months as we also prepare for the annual Edge conferences in the USA, APAC and Europe which will include a technical stream with a series of sessions on major technical features and some implementation advice. This year we decided to make it more beneficial for you by focussing on key implementation challenges and offer advice on how to solve implementation issues and business requirements. Each session will talk capabilities, offer general direction and offer advice garnered from our cloud implementations and advice from our implementations/partners gather over the years. Hopefully you can back from the sessions with some useful advice. The details of the 2018 Oracle Utilities Edge Customer Conference Product Forum are located at this site.

This year looks like an amazing year and I look forward to publishing a lot more often this year to benefit us all.

It is that time of year again, Customer Edge conference time. This year we will be once again holding a Technical stream which focuses on the Oracle Utilities Application Framework and related products. Once again, I will be holding the majority of the sessions at the various conferences.

The sessions this year are focused around giving valuable advice as well as giving a window into our future plans for the various technologies we are focusing upon. As normal, there will be a general technical session covering our road map as well as specific set of session targeting important topics. The technical sessions planned for this year include:

This year we have decided to not only discuss capabilities but also give an idea of how we use those facilities in our own cloud implementations to reduce our operating costs for you to use as a template for on-premise and hybrid implementations.

For customers and partners interested in attending the USA Edge Conference registration is available.

As you may or may not be aware a set of hardware based security vulnerabilities known as Spectre/Spectre and Meltdown have been identified. Vendors are quickly issuing software patches to address these hardware based vulnerabilities. Oracle has issued a number of patches to address this issue in it January 2018 patchsets.

Customers should refer to Addendum to the January 2018 CPU Advisory for Spectre and Meltdown (Doc Id: 2347948.1) for details of the patches available to address this issue and the state of patches for other products.

At this time, no patches are expected for Oracle Utilities products as the vulnerabilities are addressed by applying the patches outlined in the above article. It is highly recommended that Oracle Utilities customers apply patches outlined in that article to protect their systems. For customer's on non-Oracle platforms, it is recommended to refer to the relevant vendor site for any operating system or related patches for those platforms.

The latest release of Oracle Utilities Application Framework, namely 4.3.0.5.0 (or 4.3 SP5 for short) will be included in new releases of Oracle Utilities products over the next few months. This release is quite diverse with a range of new and improved capabilities that can be used by implementations of the new releases.

The key features included in the release including the following:

• Mobile Framework release - The initial release of a new REST based channel to allow Oracle Utilities products to provide mobile device applications. This release is a port of the Mobile Communication Platform (MCP) used in the Oracle Mobile Workforce Management product to the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. This initial release is restricted to allow Oracle Utilities products to provide mobile experiences for use with an enterprise. As with other channels in the Oracle Utilities Application Framework, it can be deployed alone or in conjunction with other channels.
• Support For Chrome for Business - In line with Oracle direction, the Oracle Utilities Application Framework supports Chrome for Business as a browser alternative. A new browser policy, in line with Oracle direction, has been introduced to clarify support arrangement for Chrome and other supported browsers. Check individual product release notes for supported versions.
• Improved Security Portal - To reduce effort in managing security definitions within the product, the application service portal has been extended to show secured objects or objects that an application service is related to.
• Attachment Changes - In the past to add attachments to object required custom UI maps to link attachment types to objects. In this release, a generic zone has been added reducing the need for any custom UI Maps. The attachment object now also records the extension of the attachment to reduce issues where an attachment type can have multiple extensions (e.g. DOC vs DOCX).
• Support for File Imports in Plug In Batch - In past releases Plug In Batch was introduced as a configuration based approach to replace the need for Java programming for batch programming. In the past, SQL processing and File Exports where supported for batch processing. In this release, importing files in CSV, Fixed format or XML format are now supported using Plug In Batch (using Groovy based extensions). Samples are supplied with the product that can be copied and altered accordingly.
• Improvements in identifying related To Do's - The logic determining related To Do's has been enhanced to provide additional mechanisms for finding related To Do's to improve closing related work. This will allow a wider range to To Do's to be found than previously determined.
• Web Service Categories - To aid in API management (e.g. when using Integration Cloud Service and other cloud services) Web Service categories can be attached to Inbound Web Services, Outbound Message Types and legacy XAI services that are exposed via Inbound Web Services. A given web service or outbound message can be associated with more than one category. Categories are supplied with the product release and custom categories can be added.
• Extended Oracle Web Services Manager Support - In past releases Oracle Web Services Manager could provide additional transport and message security for Inbound Web Services. In this release, Oracle Web Services Manager support has been extended to include Outbound Messages and REST Services.
• Outbound Message Payload Extension - In this release it is possible to include the Outbound Message Id as part of the payload as a reference for use in the target system.
• Dynamic URL support in Outbound Message - In the past Outbound Message destinations were static to the environment. In this release the URL used for the destination can vary according to the data or dynamically assembled programmatically if necessary.
• SOAP Header Support in Outbound Messages - In this release it is possible to dynamically set SOAP Header variables in Outbound Messages.
• New Groovy Imports Step Type - A new step type has been introduced to define classes to be imported for use in Groovy members. This promotes reuse and allows for coding without the need for the fully qualified package name in Groovy Library and Groovy Member step types. 
• New Schema Designer - A newly redesigned Schema Editor has been introduced to reduce total cost of ownership and improve schema development. Color coding has been now included in the raw format editor.
• Oracle Jet Library Optimizations - To improve integration with the Oracle Jet libraries used by the Oracle Utilities Application Framework, a new UI Map fragment has been introduced to include in any Jet based UI Map to reduce maintenance costs.
• YUI Library Removal - With the desupport of the YUI libraries, they have been removed from this release in the Oracle Utilities Application Framework. Any custom code directly referencing the YUI libraries should use the Oracle Utilities Application Framework equivalent function.
• Proxy Settings now at JVM level - In past release, proxy settings were required on individual connections where needed. In this release, the standard HTTP Proxy JVM options are now supported at the container/JVM layer to reduce maintenance costs.

This is just a summary of some of the new features in the release. A full list is available in the release notes of the products using this service pack.

Note: Some of these enhancements have been back ported to past releases. Check My Oracle Support for those patches.

Over the next few weeks, I will be writing a few articles about a few of these enhancements to illustrate the new capabilities.

Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing V2.6.0.1.0 is now available from My Oracle Support as a patch or available as a complete download in Oracle Delivery Cloud. This release uses the Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.3.0.5.0. The release notes available from those download sites contains a full list of new, updated and deprecated functionality available for Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing V2.6.0.1.0 and Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.3.0.5.0. Please refer to these documents for details.

The documentation also covers upgrading from previous versions of Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing.

With the release of Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing V2.6.0.1.0, the Oracle Utilities Customer To Meter product has also been updated to V2.6.0.1.0. This release is now available from Oracle Software Delivery Cloud.

The release notes available from those download sites contains a full list of new, updated and deprecated functionality available for Oracle Utilities Customer To Meter V2.6.0.1.0 and Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.3.0.5.0. Please refer to these documents for details.

The documentation also covers upgrading from previous versions of Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing as well as Oracle Utilities Customer To Meter V2.6.0.0.0.

One of the recent changes to the Configuration Migration Assistant is the ability to configure the individual jobs to work as a group to reduce the amount of time and effort in migrating configuration data from a source system to a target. This is a technique we use in our Oracle Utilities Cloud implementations to reduce costs. Basically after this configuration is complete you just have to execute F1-MGDIM (Migration Data Set Import Monitor) and F1-MGDPR (Migration Data Set Export Monitor) jobs to complete all your CMA needs.

The technique is available for Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.3.0.4.0 and above using some new batch control features. The features used are changing the Enter algorithms on the state transitions and setting up Post Processing algorithms on relevant batch controls. The last step will kick off each process within the same execution to reduce the need to execute each process individually.

The first step is to configure the import process, which is a multi-step process, to autotransition data when necessary to save time. This is done on the F1-MigrDataSetImport business object and setting the Enter Algorithm on the following states:

Save the changes to reflect the change

The next step is to set the Post Processing algorithms on the Import jobs to instruct the Monitor to run multiple steps within its execution.

(*) Note: For multi-lingual solutions, consider adding an additional Post Processing algorithm F1-ENG2LNGSJ to copy any missing language entries

Now you can run the Monitors for Import and Export with minimum interaction which simplifies the features.

Note: To take full advantage of this new configuration enable Automatically Apply on Imports.

When using Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.3.x with any Oracle Utilities product you need to use the Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c Infrastructure version of Oracle WebLogic not the vanilla release of Oracle WebLogic. The Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c Infrastructure version contains the Java Required Files (JRF) profile that is used by the Oracle Utilities Application Framework to display the enhanced help experience and for standardization within the Framework.

The installation used by the Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c Infrastructure version is the same experience as the vanilla Oracle WebLogic version but it contains the applyJRF profile that applies extra functionality and libraries necessary for Oracle Utilities Application Framework to operate.

The Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c Infrastructure version contains the following additional functionality:

• An additional set of Java libraries that are typically used by Oracle products to provide standard connectors and integration to Oracle technology.
• Diagnostic Frameworks (via WebLogic Diagnostic Framework) that can be used with Oracle Utilities products to proactively detect and provide diagnostic information to reduce problem resolution times. This requires the profile to be installed and enabled on the domain post release. The standard Fusion Diagnostic Framework can be used with Oracle Utilities products
• Fusion Middleware Control is shipped as an alternative console for advanced configuration and monitoring.

As with all Oracle software the Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c Infrastructure software is available from Oracle Software Delivery Cloud. For example:

The Oracle Utilities Customer Care And Billing and Oracle Utilities Application Framework, ship security rollups on a regular basis (especially for older releases of the products). These patch sets contain all the security patches in a small number of downloads (one for the CCB product and one for OUAF product). Product other than CCB , can install the OUAF patch sets to take advantage of the rollup.

The following rollups are available from support.oracle.com:

For more information refer to the individual patches. For newer releases not listed, the patches are already included in the base releases so no additional effort is required.

A few years ago, we announced that XML Application Integration (XAI) and the Multipurpose Listener (MPL) were being retired from the product and replaced with Inbound Web Services (IWS) and Oracle Service Bus (OSB) Adapters.

In the next service pack of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework, XAI and MPL will finally be removed from the product.

The following applies to this:

• The MPL software and XAI Servlet will be removed from the code. This is the final step in the retirement process. The tables associated with XAI and MPL will not be removed from the product for backward compatibility with newer adapters. Maintenance functions that will be retained will be prefixed with Message rather than XAI. Menu items not retained will be disabled by default. Refer to release notes of service packs (latest and past) for details of the menu item changes.
• Customers using XAI should migrate to Inbound Web Services using the following guidelines:
  • XAI Services using the legacy Base and CorDaptix adapters will be automatically migrated to Inbound Web Services. These services will be auto-deployed using the Inbound Web Services Deployment online screen or iwsdeploy utility.
  • XAI Services using the Business adapter (sic) can either migrate their definitions manually to Inbound Web Services or use a technique similar to the technique outlined in Converting your XAI Services to IWS using scripting. Partners should take the opportunity to rationalize their number of web services using the multi-operation capability in Inbound Web Services.
  • XAI Services using any other adapter than those listed above are not migrate-able as they are typically internal services for use with the MPL.
• Customers using the Multi-purpose Listener should migrate to Oracle Service Bus with the relevant adapters installed.

There are a key number of whitepapers that can assist in this process:

• Web Services Best Practices (Doc Id: 2214375.1)
• Migrating from XAI to IWS (Doc Id: 1644914.1)
• Oracle Service Bus Integration (Doc Id: 1558279.1)

With the advent of easier and easier techniques for creating and maintaining Oracle Utilities environments, the number of environment will start to grow, increasing costs and introducing more risk into a project. This applies to on-premise as well as cloud implementations, though the cloud implementations have more visible costs.

An environment is a copy of the Oracle Utilities product (one software and one database at a minimum).

To minimize your costs and optimize the number of environments to manage there are a few techniques that may come in handy:

• Each Environment Must Be On Your Plan - Environments are typically used to support an activity or group of activities on some implementation plan. If the environment does not support any activities on a plan then it should be questioned.
• Each Environment Must Have An Owner - When I started working in IT a long time ago, the CIO of the company I worked for noticed the company had over 1500 IT systems. To rationalize he suggested shutting them all down and seeing who screamed to have it back on. That way he could figure out what was important to what part of the business. While this technique is extreme it points out an interesting thought. If you can identify the owner of each environment then that owner is responsible to determine the life of that environment including its availability or performance. Consider removing environments not owned by anyone.
• Each Environment Should Have a Birth Date And End Date - As an  extension to the first point, each environment should have a date it is needed and a date when it is no longer needed. It is possible to have an environment be perpetual, for example Production, but generally environments are needed for a particular time frame. For example, you might be creating environments to support progressive builds, where you would have a window of builds you might want to keep (a minimum set I hope). That would dictate the life-cycle of the environment. This is very common in cloud environments where you can reserve capacity dynamically so it can impose time limits to enforce regular reassessment.
• Reuse Environments - I have been on implementations where individual users wanted their own personal environments. While this can be valid in some situations, it is much better to encourage reuse of environments across users and across activities. If you can plan out your implementation you can identify how to best reuse environments to save time and costs.
• Ask Questions; Don't Assume - When agreeing to create and manage the environment, ask the above questions and more to ensure that the environment is needed and will support the project appropriately for the right amount of time. I have been on implementations where 60 environments existed initially and after applying these techniques and others was able to reduce it to around 20. That saved a lot of costs.

So why the emphasis on keeping your environments to a minimal number given the techniques for building and managing them are getting easier? Well, no matter how easy keeping an environment consumes resources (computer and people) and keeping them at a minimum keeps costs minimized.

The techniques outlined above apply to Oracle Utilities products but can be applied to other products with appropriate variations.

For additional advice on this topic, refer to the Software Configuration Management Series(Doc Id: 560401.1) whitepapers available from My Oracle Support.

Customers and partners regularly ask me questions around capacity of traffic on their Oracle Utilities products implementations and how to best handle their expected volumes.

The key to answering this question is to under a number of key concepts:

• Capacity is related to the number of users, threads etc, lets call them actors to be generic, are actively using the system. As the Oracle Utilities Application Framework is stateless, then actorsonly consume resources when they are active on any part of the architecture. If they are idle then they are not consuming resources. This is important as the number of logged on users does not dictate capacity.
• The goal of capacity is to have enough resource to handle peak loads and to minimize capacity when the load drops to the minimum expected. This makes sure you have enough for the busy times but also you are not wasting resource.
• Capacity is not just online users it is also batch threads, Web Service Clients, REST clients and mobile clients (for mobile application interfaces). It is a combination for each channel. Each channel can be monitored individually to determine capacity for each channel.

This is the advice I tend to give customers who want to monitor capacity:

• For channels using Oracle WebLogic you want to use Oracle WebLogic Mbeans such as ThreadPoolRuntimeMbean (using ExecuteThreads) for protocol level monitoring. If you want to monitor each server individually to get an idea of capacity then you might want to try ServerChannelRuntimeMBean (using ConnectionsCount). In the latter case, look at each channel individually to see what your traffic looks like.
• For Batch, when using it with Oracle Coherence, then use the inbuilt Batch monitoring API (via JMX) and use the sum of NumberOfMembers attribute to determine the active number of threads etc running in your cluster. Refer to the Server Administration Guide shipped with the Oracle Utilities product for details of this metric and how to collect it.
• For database connections, it is more complex as connection pools (regardless of the technique used) rely on a maximum size limit. If this limit is exceeded then you want to know of how many pending requests are waiting to detect how bigger the pool should be. The calculations are as follows:
  • Oracle WebLogic JDBC Data Sources: Use the Mbean JDBCDataSourceRuntimeMBean with the CurrCapacity + WaitingForConnectionCurrentCount attributes.
  • Oracle Universal Connection Pool (12.x): Use the UCP MBean UniversalConnectionPoolMBean with the (maxPoolSize– availableConnectionsCount) + PendingRequestsCount attributes.

Note: You might notice that the database active connections are actually calculations. This is due to the fact that the metrics capture the capacity within a limit and need to take into account when the limit is reached and has waiting requests.

The above metrics should be collected at peak and non-peak times. This can be done manually or using Oracle Enterprise Manager.

Once the data is collected it is recommended to be used for the following:

• Connection Pool Sizes– The connection pools should be sized using the minimum values experienced and with the maximum values with some tolerances for growth.
• Number of Servers to setup– For each channel, determine the number of servers based upon the numbers and the capacity on each server. Typically at a minimum of two servers should be setup for the minimum high availability solutions. Refer to Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture for more advice.

With the replacement of the Multi-Purpose Listener (MPL) with the Oracle Service Bus (OSB) with the additional OSB Adapters for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products, customers have asked about transaction staging support.

One of the most common questions I have received is why there is an absence of an OSB Adapter for the XAI Staging table. Let me explain the logic.

• One Pass versus Two Passes. The MPL processed its integration by placing the payload from the integration into the XAI Staging table. The MPL would then process the payload in a second pass. The staging record would be marked as complete or error. The complete ones would need to be removed using the XAI Staging purge process run separately. You then used XAI Staging portals to correct the data coming in for ones in error. On the other hand, the OSB Adapters treat the product as a "black box" (i,e, like a product) and it directly calls the relevant service directly (for inbound) and polls the relevant Outbound or NDS table for outbound processing records directly. This is a single pass process rather than multiple that MPL did. OSB is far more efficient and scalable than the MPL because of this.
• Error Hospital. The idea behind the XAI Staging is that error records remain in there for possible correction and reprocessing. This was a feature of MPL. In the OSB world, if a process fails for any reason, the OSB can be configured to act as an Error Hospital. This is effectively the same as the MPL except you can configure the hospital to ignore any successful executions which reduces storage. In fact, OSB has features where you can detect errors anywhere in the process and allows you to determine which part of the integration was at fault in a more user friendly manner. OSB effectively already includes the staging functionality so adding this to the adapters just duplicates processing. The only difference is that error correction, if necessary, is done within the OSB rather than the product.
• More flexible integration model. One of the major reasons to move from the MPL to the OSB is the role that the product plays in integration. If you look at the MPL model, any data that was passed to the product from an external source was automatically the responsibility of the product (that is how most partners implemented it). This means the source system had no responsibility for the cleanliness of their data as you had the means of correcting the data as it entered the system. The source system could send bad data over and over and as you dealt with it in the staging area that would increase costs on the target system. This is not ideal. In the OSB world, you can choose your model. You can continue to use the Error Hospital to keep correcting the data if you wish or you can configure the Error Hospital to compile the errors and send them back, using any adapter, to the source system for correction. With OSB there is a choice, MPL did not really give you a choice.

With these considerations in place it was not efficient to add an XAI Staging Adapter to OSB as it would duplicate effort and decrease efficiency which negatively impacts scalability.

Oracle Mobile Cloud Enterprise 2018 Associate Developer | 1Z0-927: This certification covers implementation topics of related Oracle Paas Services such as: Visual Builder Cloud Service, Java Cloud Service, Developer Cloud Service, Application Container Cloud Service, and Container Native Apps. This certification validates understanding of the Application Development portfolio and capacity to configure the services.

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Howdy, Pardner. Have you moseyed over to JavaRanch lately? Pull up a stool at the OCJA or OCJP Wall of Fame and tell your tale or peruse the tales of others. 

Ok - I'm not so great at the cowboy talk, but if you're serious about a Java career and haven't visited JavaRanch, you are missing out! 

JavaRanch, a self-proclaimed "friendly place for Java greenhorns [beginners]" was created in 1997 by Kathy Sierra, co-author of at least 5 Java guides for Oracle Press. The ranch was taken over in subsequent years by Paul Wheaten who continues to run this space today.

In addition to a robust collection of discussion forums about all things Java, JavaRanch provides resources to learn and practice Java, book recommendations, and resources to create your first Java program and test your Java skills.

One of our favorite features of JavaRanch remains the Walls of Fame! This is where you can read the personal experiences of other candidates certified on Java. Learn from their processes and their mistakes. Be inspired by their accomplishments. Share your own experience. 

Visit the Oracle Certified Java Associate Wall of Fame

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During his keynote at Modern Customer Experience 2018, Des Cahill, Head CX Evangelist, stated that CX should stand for Continuous Experimentation. He encouraged 4,500 enthusiastic marketers, customer service, sales, and commerce professional us to try new strategies, to take risks, strive to be remarkable, and triumph through sheer determination.

Casey Neistat echoed Des, challenging us to “do what you can’t,” while best-selling author Cheryl Strayed inspired us to look past our fears and be brave. “Courage isn’t success,” she reminded us, “it’s doing what’s hard regardless of the outcome.”

CX professionals today face numerous challenges: the relentless rise of customer expectations, the accelerating pace of innovation, evolving regulations like GDPR, increase ROI, plus the constant pressure to raise the bar. Modern Customer Experience not only inspired attendees to become the heroes of their organization, but it armed each with the tools to do so.

If you missed Carolyne-Matseshe Crawford, VP of Fan Experience at Fanatics talk about how her company’s culture pervades the entire customer experience, or how Magen Hanrahan VP of Product Marketing at Kraft Heinz is obsessed with data driven marketing tactics, give them a watch. And don’t miss Comcast’s Executive VP, Chief Customer Experience Officer, Charlie Herrin, who wants to build proactive customer experience and dialogue into Comcast’s products themselves with artificial intelligence.

The Modern Customer Experience X Room showcased CX innovation, like augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things. But it wasn’t all just mock-ups and demos, a Mack Truck, a Yamaha motorcycle, and an Elgin Street Sweeper were on display, showcasing how Oracle customers put innovation to use to create legendary customer experiences.

Attendees were able to let off some steam during morning yoga and group runs. They relived the 90s with Weezer during CX Fest, and our Canine Heroes from xxxxx were a highlight of everyone’s day.

But don’t just take it from us. Here’s what a few of our attendees had to say about the event.

“Modern Customer Experience gives me the ability to learn about new products on the horizon, discuss challenges, connect with other MCX participants, learn best practices and understand we’re not alone in our journey.” – Matt Adams, Sales Cloud Manager, ArcBest

 “Modern Customer Experience really allows me to do my job more effectively. Without it, I don’t know where I would be! It’s the best conference of the year.” – Joshua Parker, Digital Marketing and Automation Manager, Rosetta Stone

We’re still soaking it all in. You can watch all the highlights from Modern Customer Experience keynotes on YouTube, and peruse the event’s photo slideshow. Don’t forget to share your images on social media, with #ModernCX and sign up for alerts when registration for Modern Customer Experience 2019 opens!

Companies may give up their servers, storage, and entire data centers when they move to the cloud, but their need for support services doesn’t go away, it changes. Recognizing a growing need for enterprise-class support in the cloud, Oracle is making its Platinum-level support services available at no additional cost to all customers of Oracle Fusion software-as-a-service applications.

“Our objective is to put out a service capability that is simply the best—bar none,” said Oracle CEO Mark Hurd, in announcing that a range of support services would be available for Oracle Fusion enterprise resource planning, enterprise performance management, human capital management, supply chain, manufacturing, and sales and service cloud applications.

The SaaS support services include 24/7 rapid-response technical support, proactive technical monitoring, success planning, end-user adoption guidance, and education resources.

“Most of our customers are going to cloud,” Hurd said in a briefing with journalists at Oracle’s headquarters in Redwood Shores, California. As that happens, he said, “it’s important for someone in the industry, particularly an industry leader in these mission-critical applications, to take a position” on what level of service that transition demands.

• Related: Oracle Cloud trial: Get up to 3,500 hours free 

“SaaS application support offerings need to become more agile and responsive,” Hurd added. “We need to provide our SaaS customers with everything they need for rapid, low-cost implementations and a successful rollout to their users.”

Catherine Blackmore, Oracle group vice president of North America Customer Success, said Oracle will also offer new advanced services, including dedicated support and certified expertise, for customers that need a higher level of support. “We have a shared interest in our customers’ success, so we’re going above and beyond to ensure our customers have everything they need to succeed,” she said.

Cloud Levels the Playing Field

Oracle also announced the names of first-time cloud customers and others that are expanding their use of Oracle Cloud services. They include Alsea, Broadcom, Exelon, Gonzaga University, Heineken Urban Polo, Providence St. Joseph Health, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and T-Mobile US.

In a Q&A with the journalists, Hurd was asked about his outlook for SaaS adoption outside of the United States and, in particular, in the Latin America region. He said modern cloud applications can be “game changing” for businesses in places where outdated software applications are still the norm.

“You don’t need armies of experts and system integrators,” Hurd said.

Oracle develops thousands of features that are made available regularly to its SaaS application customers. “That’s a feature stream you don’t have to manage from a data center that you don’t have to operate,” Hurd said.

Self-Driving Technology

Hurd pointed to Oracle’s development of autonomous technologies, including the recently introduced Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud Service, as another big area of focus at the company. “It gets upgraded, optimized, secured, patched, and tuned, all automatically without any human intervention,” he said.

As the next step in the delivery of autonomous cloud services, Oracle announced the availability of three new Oracle Cloud Platform services with built-in artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms: Oracle Autonomous Analytics Cloud, Oracle Autonomous Integration Cloud, and Oracle Autonomous Visual Builder Cloud.

The insurance industry relies heavily on the notion of trust among transacting parties. For example, when you go to buy car insurance you get asked for things like your zip code, name, age, daily mileage, and make & model of your car. Other than, maybe, the make & model of your car you can pretty much falsify other information about yourself for a better insurance quote. Underwriters trust that you are providing the correct information, which is one of the many risks in the underwriting business.

Enterprise blockchain platforms such as one from Oracle essentially enables trust-as-a-service in such interactions. Participants (insurer and insured) need to come together to do business, but they do not necessarily trust each other. Blockchain provides a scalable mechanism to securely and easily enable trust in such scenarios. There are 4 key properties of Blockchain that enable trust-as-a-service:

1. Transparency of digital events and transactions it manages,
2. Immutability of records stored on the blockchain. through append-only time-stamped and hashed records,
3. Security and assurance that records stored on blockchain aren't compromised through built-in consensus and encryption mechanisms,
4. Privacy through cryptography

Blockchain can be a good solution for a number of insurance use cases such as:

• Reducing frauds in underwriting and claims by validating data from customers and suppliers in the value chain
• Reducing claims by offering tokenized incentives to promote safer driving behavior by capturing data from insured entities like motor vehicles
• Enabling pay-per-mile billing for insurance by keeping verifiable records of miles traveled
• And, in the not so distant future, using blockchain to determine liability in case of an accident between two autonomous vehicles by using blockchain to manage timestamped immutable records of decisions made by deep-learning models from both autonomous vehicles right before the accident.

Besides these use cases, blockchain has potential to eliminate intermediaries, improve transparency of records, eliminate manual paperwork, and error-prone processes, which together can deliver orders of magnitude improvement in operational efficiency for businesses. Of course, there are other types of insurance such as healthcare, reinsurance, catastrophic events insurance, property and casualty insurance, which would have some unique flavor of use cases but they would similarly benefit from blockchain to reduce risk and improve business efficiency.

There is no question that blockchain can, potentially, be a disruptive force in the insurance industry. It would have to overcome legal and regulatory barriers before we see mass adoption of blockchain among the industry participants. 

If you are working on an interesting project related to the use of Blockchain for insurance industry feel free to get in touch by leaving a comment or contact us through social media or Oracle sales rep. We’d be glad to help you connect with our subject matter experts and with your industry peers who may be working on similar use cases with Oracle. For more information on Oracle Blockchain, please visit Oracle Blockchain home pages here, and here.