Side effects of Oracle Agile PLM customizations
Customizations are simply an inevitable reality for large organizations, and may even help them retain their competitive advantage if they are built to accommodate processes that serve as a differentiator for the business. What also follows, however, are the side-effects of these customizations:
- Customizations are expensive to build and maintain.
- They can increase implementation times to months and even years.
- Make the business dependent on large teams of developers.
- They reduce upgradeability, and act as accrued technical debt.
Under the hood of PLM customizations
PLM customizations have led businesses to fall into 8-12 years upgrade cycles, thereby adding future digital security challenges to the list of IT concerns. Moreover, deploying and executing custom code to automate applications required extensive database, infrastructure, and programming skills in addition to dependency management. Developers depended on Java IDEs, legacy Application Programming Interface (APIs), and Software Development Kits (SDKs) to develop software code for Agile PLM customizations. This would be tested thoroughly in non-production instances and then deployed on the production server. While server-side script-based customization in legacy Oracle PLM eliminated the need for IDEs, it could only be used to build small and simple customizations, which nonetheless incurred significant costs and effort to maintain.
While customizability and extensibility determines the worthiness of a PLM solution for a large organization, it also detracts the underlying business from its ultimate objective.
While customizability and extensibility determines the worthiness of a PLM solution for a large organization, it also detracts the underlying business from its ultimate objective.
Low and no-code redefine SaaS customizations
While cloud PLM solutions brought their fair share of promises to businesses in the form of lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), the ability to stay current, reduced IT burden, and greater agility and flexibility, they also brought new challenges to the deal. Integration was one of these major challenges, leading 1 in 2 businesses to abandon a cloud app in 3 years and causing 54% of missed project deadlines. This also hampered the ability to automate cross-platform workflows, leading businesses to resort to point-to-point integrations and weeks-long custom code development.
However, the advent of intelligent automation and low and no-code platforms have redefined the outlook on customizations in enterprise technology, whether on-premise, cloud-based, or hybrid. In the Oracle ecosystem two key services have led to this shift: Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC), and Application Composer.
However, the advent of intelligent automation and low and no-code platforms have redefined the outlook on customizations in enterprise technology, whether on-premise, cloud-based, or hybrid. In the Oracle ecosystem two key services have led to this shift: Oracle Integration Cloud (OIC), and Application Composer.