OAUG Recognizes Member Achievements During COLLABORATE 07

The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) recognized the accomplishments of several OAUG members on April 18, 2007, during the OAUG Annual Meeting of the Members at the COLLABORATE 07 conference in Las Vegas, Nev.

OAUG 2007 Member of the Year Mohan Dutt with OAUG Executive Director Steven Hughes and OAUG President Jan Wagner

OAUG 2007 Member of the Year, Mohan Dutt (center), with OAUG Executive Director, Steven Hughes (left), and OAUG President Jan Wagner.

Mohan Dutt, with Hyperion Solutions Corporation, was named the OAUG 2007 Member of the Year. An OAUG member since 1996, Dutt has been an extremely active member of the OAUG and familiar name in the SIG community for the last seven years. In fact, he formed the OAUG Procurement SIG in 2002 and was the SIG chair until 2004. Today, the Procurement SIG meeting is the largest at any OAUG conference.

Dutt also founded the Contracts SIG in 2004 and continues to serve as the SIG chair. The Contracts SIG was the first SIG to host a joint SIG meeting (with the Advanced Pricing SIG at Oracle OpenWorld 2006), as well as SIG within a Geo Meeting (with the NorCalOAUG at the Training Day 2007).

In addition, Dutt was the first chair of the OAUG Technology Committee, a position he held for two years, and was involved with the OAUG Web site redesign project in 2003. Mohan’s contributions to the recent development of the OAUG Skills Marketplace and the OAUG Community Forum projects were also significant. Mohan continues to serve as a member of the OAUG Technology Committee.

Dutt was also recognized for his firm belief in the OAUG as an educational forum for its members. As a current member of the OAUG Education Committee, Dutt was responsible for developing the OAUG Forum Order Management Track at COLLABORATE 07.

Michael Rulf with USinternetworking with OAUG Executive Director Steven Hughes and OAUG President Jan Wagner

Michael Rulf (center) representing OAUG 2007 Innovator of the Year, USinternetworking, with OAUG Executive Director, Steven Hughes (left), and OAUG President Jan Wagner.

The OAUG also recognized USinternetworking (USi) as the OAUG 2007 Innovator of the Year. The Innovator of the Year award recognizes an OAUG member company that has demonstrated an innovative breakthrough technique using the standard functionality of an Oracle Application. Michael Rulf, with USi, was on hand during the meeting to accept the award.

USi, an AT&T company focused on application outsourcing and professional services, and headquartered in Annapolis, Md., has been an OAUG member since 2005. USi was recognized for their unique approach to streamlining internal compliance requirements while more rapidly delivering service to new customers. Additionally, since the company’s customers also face many of the same regulatory challenges, USi wanted to create an offering that customers could use to help meet their compliance requirements.

As a result of the two objectives, the company’s IT group established a strategic plan to eliminate “sneakerware,” the wear and tear on employees’ sneakers as a result of the manual process associated with provisioning internal and external users. USi also sought to automate existing manual auditing processes and integrate those processes across diverse systems to streamline regulatory compliance requirements, increase security and reduce costs via a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Following a formal evaluation process, the team set out to achieve their goal by leveraging the company’s existing investments in applications such as PeopleSoft and Ariba, with new investments in components of Oracle Fusion Middleware. In April 2006, the group officially embarked on its mission to create an SOA that would streamline its software infrastructure to enhance regulatory compliance, support greater reuse and bolster its workflow capabilities.

Today, USi is experiencing a number of benefits from its SOA. These benefits include the ability to reuse software components, automated provisioning, single sign-on and enhanced auditing capabilities for regulatory compliance. Additionally, the SOA provides USi a way to commoditize services that can easily be reused by different departments and applications resulting in a low cost IT architecture.

While USi’s SOA was initially created for internal use, the company quickly realized the business value of extending the solution to its clients. As an ASP offering managed enterprise solutions for Oracle, PeopleSoft, Siebel and other applications, USi helps manage user provisioning and authentication for thousands of users across multiple enterprises.

“The OAUG’s annual awards are presented to those members who demonstrate creativity and outstanding leadership,” said Jan Wagner, president of the OAUG. “It’s this level of commitment and original ideas that proves the point that the OAUG truly is global users, global solutions.”