I caught an interesting session this week at Collaborate with Floyd Teter, who’s with the Jet Propulsion Lab, a bunch of scientists in Pasadena, Calif. working for NASA.

Teter’s presentation mirrored much of what I’d heard in an earlier session Nadia Bendjedou’s “10 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for Fusion Applications.” That presentation has apparently been making the rounds. It’s been done before with some tweaking, such as the 10 Things PeopleSoft users can do … and 10 things E-Business Suite customers… sessions we’ve covered before, yet it’s a useful one, nonetheless.

Teter’s session has one major difference, however. He’s actually a customer preparing a roadmap to Fusion applications for his business.

Well, one major difference and one minor difference. Teter’s is a much more humorous presentation (be sure to carefully read his “safe harbor statement” if you’re ever in one of his sessions). In addition to serving as systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Teter is the chair of the OAUG’s Fusion Council so he’s pretty attuned to what’s happening. His roadmap is based largely on the aforementioned “10 steps” presentation. He advocates a small, incremental approach. Still, there are some differences.

First of all, there are some things that make the Jet Propulsion Lab unique. A scientific organization, it works on consensus– everyone has to agree– so projects can take a long time. Additionally, it’s not chasing customers, it’s chasing government funding that tends to go down each year, Teter said. Each business owner can make their own business process, so integration and flexibility are very important. Primarily an Oracle shop, the lab runs E-Business Suite 11.5, but “whether you’re on JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, E-Business Suite or Siebel, it doesn’t matter,” Teter said. Preparation is key.

Teter offered a few more nuggets during his session: