Modernizing Oracle JD Edwards does not have to mean replacing what already works or subjecting the business to a massive transformation every few years. At INFOCUS 2026, the message behind “JD Edwards: Modernization without Disruption” was much more practical: protect the stability of the core while continually creating room for business to evolve.

Oracle’s Paul Houtkooper framed that approach around three connected priorities: keep the core steady through continuous adoption, continuously enable the people using the system, and then extend the workforce with automation and AI. Rather than treating modernization as periodic maintenance, organizations can make it an ongoing business discipline.

The session also provided a preview of how Oracle is modernizing JD Edwards itself, along with customer examples showing what this approach looks like in practice.

Release 27: Evolving the Foundation Without Reinventing It

Release 27 represents a visible step forward for the EnterpriseOne user experience, including a new Redwood-influenced look and feel. But Houtkooper emphasized an important distinction: the interface is changing without forcing users to relearn JD Edwards.

Applications and navigation remain familiar, while new fonts, colors, and visual treatments provide a more modern experience. Existing automated testing should also continue to work because Oracle has not changed the interface at a level that would fundamentally disrupt those processes. For organizations running JD Edwards EnterpriseOne alongside Oracle Fusion applications, the change also creates a more consistent experience across the Oracle ecosystem.

Modernization is happening below the surface as well. Release 27 moves EnterpriseOne from Java 8 to Java 21, with Oracle planning to advance to Java 25 afterward. Oracle is also simplifying its supported platform matrix and moving to 64-bit only at both the tools and application layers following Release 27. For customers still operating 32-bit environments, the message was clear: planning for that transition needs to be underway.

Oracle also plans to introduce a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for EnterpriseOne across Application Interface Services (AIS) and Server Manager. That will make JD Edwards accessible to Oracle AI agents and help connect existing investments in Orchestrator with Oracle’s emerging agentic AI capabilities, particularly for organizations operating hybrid JD Edwards and Fusion environments.

Continuous Adoption Starts by Protecting Stability

Modernization becomes much easier when innovation and maintenance are not competing for the same resources.

Darling Ingredients demonstrated this principle at significant scale. The company uses JD Edwards across more than 110 locations, 11 languages, and approximately 2,900 users. Its organizational structure separates application support, application improvement, and larger project work. That separation gives one team responsibility for stability while others concentrate on business needs, improvements, and strategic projects.

The company also prioritizes standard JD Edwards functionality whenever possible. When a business requirement cannot be met in the core system, the team first looks for an existing standard solution elsewhere in its application landscape. If that does not work, it turns to low-code development or automation rather than immediately customizing JD Edwards.

That discipline makes continuous adoption more manageable. Darling moved to EnterpriseOne 9.2 in 2016 and has taken an upgrade every year since. Rather than treating those updates as isolated IT projects, the company aligns them with business initiatives such as acquisitions and JD Edwards rollouts so testing and implementation activities can overlap.

There is another important lesson in that approach: modernization cannot belong exclusively to IT. Darling treats ERP initiatives as business projects, with business stakeholders expected to participate in implementation, testing, and decision-making.

Continuous Adoption Requires Continuous Enablement

Keeping the software current only delivers value if users can keep pace with it.

Fulton Hogan confronted that challenge while undertaking a greenfield reimplementation of JD Edwards 9.2 as part of its Future Systems transformation. During the program, the organization grew from approximately 8,000 to 11,000 employees across New Zealand and Australia. Its learning strategy therefore needed to scale alongside the ERP environment.

The company combined self-paced e-learning, face-to-face workshops, training content, support networks, and Oracle Guided Learning (OGL), embedded directly within EnterpriseOne 9.2. Instead of viewing training as something completed before go-live, Fulton Hogan created an “always-on” learning environment that could evolve as processes and technology changed.

That approach also gives the organization useful behavioral data. Fulton Hogan reported engagement with 95% of its OGL guides. More importantly, usage and search data can reveal where employees need additional help. Frequent searches around purchase orders or service work orders, for example, can identify areas of significant process change and signal where additional guidance or coaching may be necessary.

The business itself played a central role throughout the transformation. End users participated in design and testing, helped keep configuration aligned with real-world requirements, and delivered training to other employees. The goal was not for technology teams to build a system the business, but for the business to develop ownership of the solution and the knowledge required to sustain it.

AI Should Extend the Workforce, Not Disconnect From the Core

Once the technology foundation is stable and employees are equipped to use it, AI becomes another way to extend what the organization can accomplish.

Central National Gottesman (CNG) provided a practical example. Rather than pursuing AI demonstrations for their own sake, the company focused on measurable business outcomes including cycle-time reduction, fewer chargebacks, transaction costs, and increased capacity. The objective was to move employees away from repetitive data entry and toward exception handling while keeping business users responsible for the final outcome.

CNG built an AI solution grounded in JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, EDI, and unstructured documents. AI extracts and normalizes information, validates it against E1 and EDI data, identifies mismatches involving items, pricing, quantities, and other information, and routes exceptions to the appropriate person. High-confidence transactions can proceed touchlessly.

The reported result: CNG was able to handle 40% more order volume with 20% fewer workforce resources than would otherwise have been required to support that volume.

Just as important is how the architecture was designed. CNG uses standard EnterpriseOne objects rather than customizations. Its AI models are read-only; when data must actually be entered or an action performed, that work goes through EnterpriseOne Orchestrations, with results surfaced through UX One.

Governance is also built into the agentic approach. The system operates through bounded steps, uses whitelisted tools, respects existing user access controls, and maintains auditability around what it did, when, and why. When the necessary information is unavailable, the system is designed to say so rather than invent an answer.

Make Modernization an Operating Discipline

The customer stories differed significantly, but the underlying pattern was consistent.

Modernization begins by protecting the core and creating a repeatable approach to continuous adoption. It succeeds when organizations invest just as deliberately in continuous learning and business ownership. And once those foundations are in place, automation and AI can extend the workforce without sacrificing the governance, security, and business processes already established in Oracle JD Edwards.

That is ultimately what “modernization without disruption” means: not standing still to preserve stability, but building the organizational and technical discipline to keep moving forward without repeatedly turning innovation into upheaval.

Want More?

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