FAQ

This refers to running Oracle Value Chain Planning on Oracle's Cloud Infrastructure and Platform as a Service offerings, specifically Oracle Compute Cloud Service, Oracle Storage Cloud Service, Oracle Database Cloud Service, and Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service.

02. WHAT CAPABILITIES ARE CURRENTLY PROVIDED?

With an Oracle Compute Cloud and Oracle Storage Cloud subscription and with the tools provided in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, you can quickly provision new instances of Oracle Value Chain Planning, deploy development tools on the cloud, as well as clone your existing Oracle Value Chain Planning instances from on-premises to Oracle Cloud. In addition, your on-premises and cloud instances can be managed simultaneously from the Oracle Application Management Suite. Oracle Value Chain Planning's initial offering is comprised of Oracle Advanced Planning Command Center (APCC), Oracle Advanced Supply Chain Planning (ASCP), Oracle Constraint Based Optimization (CBO), Oracle Inventory Optimization (IO), Oracle Global Order Promising (GOP), Oracle Collaborative Planning (CP), Oracle Service Parts Planning (SPP), Oracle Demantra Demand Management (DM), Oracle Demantra Advanced Forecasting and Demand Modeling (AFDM), Oracle Demantra Predictive Trade Planning (PTP), Oracle Demantra Deductions and Settlement Management (DSM), and Oracle Demantra Real-Time Sales and Operations Planning (RTSOP). The following applications are presently included but not installed in the images: Oracle Rapid Planning (RP), Oracle Demand Signal Repository (DSR), Oracle Production Scheduling (PS), Oracle Strategic Network Optimization (SNO), Oracle In-Memory Performance-Driven Planning, Oracle Trade Promotion Optimization (TPO), Oracle Value Chain Planning Integration Base Pack, and Oracle Demantra Sales and Operations Planning Integration to Hyperion Planning. We are evaluating these for future versions of the images, but at present these would require additional installation steps on top of the provided image, including installation of required technology stack components.

03. WHAT ARE THE KEY BENEFITS TO USING ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON ORACLE CLOUD?

Key benefits are support for business growth, greater business agility, and lower costs and risks. Businesses must be agile to respond to changes such as acquisitions, globalization, divestitures, and regulatory or process changes, with the ability to adopt new technologies or applications functionality. IT can provision new development and test environments quickly in response to such changes while ensuring continuity of day-to-day operations. Oracle's Infrastructure as a Service is elastic and allows IT to scale up or scale out the infrastructure on demand. This elasticity and the flexibility to pay-as-you-go reduces the need for upfront capital expenditure and decreases wait times for hardware and other resources, reducing overall project risk.

04. IS ORACLE RELEASING ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING AS A SAAS APPLICATION?

No. The current Oracle Value Chain Planning suite will continue to be offered on-premise or for hosted deployment on Oracle Public Cloud. Instead the Development team is working on a new set of Supply Chain Planning Cloud SaaS applications that will gradually be released to our customers and will leverage the IP from the current Oracle Value Chain Planning applications.

05. DOES ORACLE PROVIDE MANAGED SERVICES FOR ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON ORACLE CLOUD?

Yes. Oracle Managed Cloud Services (OMCS) provides managed services for customers running Oracle Value Chain Planning instances on Oracle Cloud or on-premises.

06. ARE THERE ADDITIONAL FEES FOR USING ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON ORACLE CLOUD?

Oracle Cloud resources and services are available for subscription by Oracle customers. Customers who already own Oracle Value Chain Planning product licenses may use their Oracle Cloud subscription to provision and deploy Oracle Value Chain Planning instances on the Oracle Cloud. The deployed instances may be used for development, testing, training, production, etc. Once a customer acquires a subscription to Oracle Cloud, no additional Oracle Value Chain Planning license or usage license is required. To use additional Value Chain Planning products on the Oracle Cloud that were not licensed on-premise, a customer would have to license any applications not already licensed.

07. DO I NEED TO PURCHASE ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING PRODUCT LICENSES IN ORDER TO USE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON ORACLE CLOUD?

Oracle customers who already own Oracle Value Chain Planning licenses may use the Oracle Cloud to host instances of their applications. Oracle Compute Cloud uses a “Bring your Own License” model, so customers who wish to use the Oracle Compute Cloud must already own a valid license to the software deployed on virtual machines in Oracle Compute Cloud.

08. HOW DO I DEPLOY ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON ORACLE CLOUD?

Once you have an Oracle Compute Cloud subscription, you can access the Oracle Cloud Marketplace and deploy ready-made machine images for provisioning and development using the processes described in our online tutorials.

09. HOW DO I RESTRICT ACCESS TO MY ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING INSTANCES ON ORACLE CLOUD?

By default, your instance is accessible only over a secure shell using an SSH key pair that you create for authentication. Extra steps are required to configure a web URL. You can retain this URL for private use or take further steps to enable access over the public internet.

10. CAN I CUSTOMIZE AND EXTEND ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON ORACLE CLOUD?

Yes, the same Oracle tools you use within your on-premises data center are available on Oracle Cloud in order for you to customize or extend your Oracle Value Chain Planning deployments.

11. HOW DO I MIGRATE CUSTOMIZATIONS OF ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON THE CLOUD TO MY ON-PREMISES PRODUCTION SYSTEM?

Oracle Application Management Suite provides the capability to migrate changes across your Value Chain Planning instances.

12. CAN WE USE OUR OWN CUSTOM DATA WITH ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON ORACLE CLOUD?

Yes, you can clone your on-premises instances to the cloud in order to create a complete Oracle Value Chain Planning development and testing environment that uses your own existing data. You would need to upgrade your on-premise Value Chain Planning instance to Release 12.2.5.1 and then migrate the database to Oracle Compute Cloud Service or Oracle Database Cloud Services. Alternatively Customers could run Collections against their E-Business Suite (EBS) on Cloud source system and define their configuration and planning specific setups on the Oracle Value Chain Planning instance. (See question 16 for supported back-ends.)

13. ORACLE PROVIDES DATABASE CLOUD SERVICE (DBCS) AND EXADATA CLOUD SERVICE (ExaCS). CAN WE USE THESE SERVICES WITH ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING?

Yes. If you subscribe to Oracle DBCS or ExaCS, you will be able to use these services to host Oracle Value Chain Planning database images.

14. WHAT TOOLS ARE USED FOR MANAGING ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ENVIRONMENTS ON ORACLE CLOUD?

Specific to the Oracle Cloud, you will be able to use Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) on Compute Cloud Service. EM already supports Oracle Public Cloud and on-premise deployments. This can be used for EBS, WebLogic and Database across the Value Chain Planning apps. For Demantra, customers need to use Demantra admin consoles to monitor the Demantra application tier (until we provide a planned EM plug-in which provides some of these services).

15. WHAT VERSION OF ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING IS BEING OFFERED?

The Oracle Value Chain Planning image is based on Oracle Value Chain Planning 12.2.5.1. We are not offering images for earlier versions.

16. WHAT ERP BACK-END SYSTEMS ARE SUPPORTED WHEN RUNNING ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON ORACLE CLOUD?

Oracle Value Chain Planning offers version 12.2.5.1 in the Compute Cloud image. At this point in time, this image is certified against Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) on the Cloud, source only, versions 12.1.3, 12.2.4 and 12.2.5 (we are also in the process of certifying against EBS 12.2.3 on Cloud). It also supports legacy file integrations where file upload processes are updated by the customer to support upload to the Compute Cloud via SSH and SCP. We are still evaluating other integration options for Value Chain Planning but have not certified these at this point in time (JD Edwards on Cloud, EBS on-premise, JDE on-premise, legacy systems on premise, Primavera, Oracle Transportation Management, Hyperion). For Oracle Cloud to on-premise integrations, customers are recommended to use the Oracle Cloud VPN solutions to enable integration types that require connectivity back to on-premise applications. Once a VPN is established then on-premise environments can be coupled with Oracle Cloud instances to enable Value Chain Planning integrations to on-premise systems.

17. WHAT INSTANCE DEPLOYMENT DO YOU SUPPORT FOR ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON CLOUD?

At present we support distributed instance deployments only. Customers that want to deploy Value Chain Planning in a single instance configuration with Oracle E-Business Suite will have to use the Oracle E-Business Suite image and install Oracle Value Chain Planning applications in that image manually.

18. HOW DO YOU SUPPORT ORACLE DEMANTRA BUSINESS MODELER, WHICH REQUIRES WINDOWS, ON THE ORACLE CLOUD?

On-premise Windows desktops can launch Demantra Business Modeler and connect to the VCP Cloud instance via secure SSH or VPN solutions. Also Oracle Compute Cloud Service provides Windows OS images in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace for Compute Cloud. With these, customers are able to create Windows instances on Oracle Compute Cloud and then deploy Demantra Business Modeler using the Business Modeler silent installer from the Value Chain Planning instance. This Oracle Cloud-based Windows environment can be accessed by your developers using Windows Remote Desktop.

19. CAN YOU CREATE A MULTI-NODE RAC CLUSTER ON ORACLE CLOUD?

Images are offered in single-node configuration. Using the Value Chain Planning Fresh Install Enhancement Pack customers can support multi-node deployments for DBCS-RAC and ExaCS by combining with Fresh Install EBS flows for these platforms. Please note that RAC support is currently enabled only when licensed with Oracle In-Memory Performance-Driven Planning or with Demantra-only installs.

20. HOW DO I LOG SERVICE REQUESTS (SRs) AGAINST ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON CLOUD?

Oracle Value Chain Planning on Cloud is supported by the same teams as Oracle Value Chain Planning on-premises. You can log SRs against the Value Chain Planning product for a specific VCP product issue. If it is an issue related to the Value Chain Planning on Cloud images, then the SR can be logged against "Value Chain Planning on Cloud" (Product ID 12966).

21. DOES ORACLE SUPPORT DEPLOYING PRODUCTION INSTANCES OF ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON THE ORACLE COMPUTE CLOUD SERVICE?

Yes. To facilitate more complex deployments, Oracle Value Chain Planning Development is currently testing additional system configurations and developing additional automation options.

Oracle Value Chain Planning on Oracle Cloud FAQ

FAQ

01. WHAT IS ORACLE VALUE CHAIN PLANNING ON ORACLE CLOUD?