A Lifeline for EBS Customers Still on RDBMS 11gR2 and 12cR1

Yesterday, the Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group made a couple of very significant announcements for E-Business Suite customers.

• RDBMS 12cR1 (12.1.0.2) Extended Support is available through July 31, 2022
• The Extended Support fees have been waived for 12cR1 databases used for E-Business Suite through July 31, 2022.  [Previously, December 2020]

• RDBMS 11gR2 (11.2.0.4) Extended Support is available through December 31, 2020.
• The Extended Support fees have been waived for 11gR2 databases used for E-Busines Suite through December 31, 2020.

The current certified versions of the Oracle RDBMS for use with E-Business Suite R12.1 and R12.2 include 11gR2, 12cR1, and 19c.

What should E-Business Suite customers do now?

If you're on 12cR1, you should upgrade to 19c as soon as reasonably possible.
If you're on 11gR2, you too, should upgrade to 19c as soon as reasonably possible..  You could upgrade to 12.1.0.2, but you would be forcing yourself into another upgrade (to 19c) pretty soon.

Should I wait for the next release?

The Oracle Server group has switched to a "yearly" release schedule.  So, sometime during 2020, there should be an "Oracle RDBMS 20c" and, sometime in 2021, we should expect an "Oracle RDBMS 21c".

However, given that it takes a while to certify the database against E-Business Suite on the variety of platforms that are necessary, the E-Business Suite team has indicated their intention to certify on every other release.  Also important is that the certification for E-Business Suite tends to lag the database release by at least 6 months.  So, that means that the next certified release of the Oracle RDBMS for E-Business Suite should be RDBMS 21c and you might not see that certification until late in 2021.

So, if you choose to wait for the next release, you may find yourself praying for another extension... which is increasingly unlikely.

References

• Release Schedule of Current Database Releases (Doc ID 742060.1)
• Extended Support Fee Waiver for Oracle Database 12.1 and 11.2 for Oracle E-Business Suite (Doc ID 2522948.1)
• Oracle Applications Technology Group Announcement
• Oracle Support Blog Announcement
• Oracle Lifetime Support Policy for Technology Products
• Oracle Lifetime Support Policy for Applications

OAUG Connection Point 2012 in Austin, TX (July 11-12, 2012)

OAUG Connection Point 2012 is coming to Austin, TX, July 11-12, 2012! The conference will be held at the Omni Austin Hotel in beautiful downtown Austin, TX.

The keynote will be given by Jeanne Lowell, Vice President, Oracle E-Business Suite Strategy, Oracle Corporation. (Hopefully we can extract some R12.2 news from her!)

Other featured speakers include:

Elke Phelps, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Technology, Oracle Corporation. (Elke always gives interesting and informative presentations!)

David Bowin III, Oracle Fusion Applications Product Development, Oracle Corporation

Amrita Mehok, Senior Director, Product Strategy, Oracle Corporation

Some other names you may recgonize will be presenting as well:

Alyssa Johnson, ROLTA (Sessions # 10913 and 10933)

Anne Carlson, Oracle (Session # 10868)

Art Dowd, O2Works (Session # 10829)

Barbara Matthews (Session # 10925)

Bill Dunham, OATC, Inc. (Session # 10915)

John Stouffer (Session # 10880 and 10924)

Michael Barone, OATC, Inc (Session # 10905 and 10907)

Mike Swing, TruTek (Session # 10878)

Susan Behn, Infosemantics, Inc. (Session # 10821)

...and many more!

Oh, and I'll be there too! I'm giving my "Anatomy of an Upgrade to 12.1.3 (including Platform Migration)" presentation (Session # 10802). I'll also be participating in John Stouffer's "R12.1 Upgrade Panel" (Session # 10924) along with Bill Dunham, Mike Swing, and Alyssa Johnson. The panel discussions are always entertaining and provide an excellent way for the community to discuss their challenges and experiences.

"Early Bird" Registration is open through June 24^th. Particularly if you're in or near the Austin, TX area, this can be a very cost-effective way to network with the community and find solutions to your problems. More information on the conference is available through the OAUG website or this direct link:

http://connectionpoint.oaug.org/2012/austin

I hope to see you there!

– James

EBS R12.2 Online Patching Webcast

For those of you who are (like me) anxiously awaiting the release of R12.2, the Applications Technology Group (ATG) is hosting a live webcast to preview the Online Patching feature in R12.2.

Kevin Hudson, one of the lead architects of this particular feature, is the presenter for this webcast.  I had the pleasure of attending Kevin's session at Collaborate 2012 where he discussed this feature in-depth.  He is an excellent presenter and is very well-versed on this topic.  I'm sure this webcast will be worth your time.

This two hour webcast will take place on June 14 @ 8:00am (Pacific Standard Time).

Full details are on Steven Chan's blog at the link below.

ATG Live Webcast June 14: Technical Preview of EBS 12.2 Online Patching

-- James

Collaborate 2012: On Upgrading to Fusion Applications

So I attended the OAUG E-Business Suite SIG session today at Collaborate 2012 in Las Vegas, NV. One of the guest speakers was Cliff Godwin, Oracle's Sr. VP of Applications Development. During this session, he was answering a lot of questions about E-Business Suite to Fusion Applications upgrade.

One of the more interesting things that he indicated was that upgrading from E-Business Suite R12.1 to Fusion Applications will be more along the lines of what you do during an implementation from a Legacy system into E-Business Suite (than a traditional "upgrade").

What this means is that you will have to ETL data from E-Business Suite into a fresh Fusion Applications install. So, for all intents and purposes, you will be performing many of the same tasks that you performed when you first IMPLEMENTED E-Business Suite. Or, if you were going from E-Business Suite to SAP (for example).

If you think about it, this makes plenty of sense. Fusion Applications is NOT an upgrade of E-Business Suite. It is an entirely different product. Perhaps part of the problem that I've been having with the whole "E-Business Suite to Fusion Applications" discussion has been semantics? Maybe they (Oracle) should stop referring to the process as an "upgrade" and instead a "migration"?

Unlike moving from a legacy system, Oracle is developing templates to aid the ETL process so that you can convert your legacy data. This is a big difference. When you're converting data from a legacy system into E-Business Suite (or any other application), a significant part of the effort revolves around the need to "roll your own" data conversion scripts. In this case, Oracle will be providing this logic for you.

One of the selling points about moving to Fusion Applications has always been that you could migrate one module at a time. That would be particularly difficult if the process was similar to an E-Business Suite upgrade. But it makes perfect sense if you're doing a migration more akin to moving off a legacy system.

According to Cliff, initial focus is on the HCM modules and initial release of the upgrade templates is currently planned for some time "later this year".

– James