Premier Support for your Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) will end soon (December 2021) and there are important decisions to make. As a whole, the main recommendation is that you upgrade to Release 12.2 before time runs out to ensure your EBS instance is under the Premier Support umbrella through at least 2032.
Unfortunately, many EBS clients fail to perceive the importance of Premier Support and believe Market Driven Support (MDS) – a limited form of support that only covers the years 2022 and 2023 – is sufficient to cover their support gaps. Truthfully, MDS is far from being comprehensive, which can lead to exposing your EBS to unwanted added costs and security vulnerabilities.
There’s another stream of EBS clients who are interested in switching to Fusion Applications, or as they’re now called, Oracle Cloud ERP.
Oracle Fusion vs Oracle EBS R12.2
Oracle continues to make significant investments in Oracle EBS and has pledged to offer Premier Support through at least 2032, with yearly major revamps. As part of Oracle’s Continuous Innovation model and as part of the Apps Unlimited initiative, Oracle EBS release 12.2 is the last major upgrade EBS clients will ever have to make, which is a big tipping point in the history of EBS.
Now, onto listing the most prominent advantages of upgrading your EBS to release 12.2.X, here are the top ones to consider:
- R12.2 offers major improvements, enhancements, and strengthened security. Under Premier Support, Oracle EBS clients can rest assured that their instance will continue to receive ongoing new updates, fixes, and security updates that maintains the system up and running optimally and securely.
- The upgrade to R12.2 is direct, which makes the shift easy and pain-free. Also, you’ll be staying within your same instance platform, with no need to move to a completely new system, like it would happen if the decision was made to move to Fusion Applications.
- R12.2 runs on Fusion Middleware, just like Fusion Applications do, meaning that you can immediately enjoy the most valuable ERP functionality available as soon as you upgrade to R12.2.
- Long-established solution that supports mission critical business applications with reliability and efficiency.
- No major technology change is required when upgrading to R12.2. The learning curve is minimal and there is no need to adopt and incorporate new technology changes.
Some experts in the industry think of Fusion Applications as the future or Oracle ERP offerings. With it being a complete shift to a new platform, it’s understandable that many EBS clients want to take things slow for the foreseeable future. Truth of the matter is that Oracle EBS R12.2 gives many innovations to clients and there’s no rush to take the leap to Fusion immediately.
With that being said, here are some of the key aspects of Fusion that you should consider when comparing it against Oracle EBS R12.2:
- Oracle is betting on Fusion Applications as the next generation of business applications. It has a low cost of ownership and leads to faster ROI with standard architecture tools for setup and deployment models.
- Fusion Applications are packed with best-in-class enterprise solutions acquired by Oracle.
- Fusion Applications can run in a company data center or cloud computing environment, used across multiple areas including customer relationship management, human capital management, supply chain management, and so on.
- Fusion Applications is built on a service-enabled architecture and a full SaaS model that is, down the road, the right step on the journey to cloud. Enterprise applications are easily integrated into a service-oriented architecture.
And there you have it! While the family of software applications pooled together under Oracle Fusion is robust, Oracle is committed to help EBS clients maximize the potential of their Oracle investment by continuously delivering ongoing application and technology updates without a major upgrade involved after R12.2.
Historically, EBS clients have adopted new versions of middleware along with new code by engaging in major release upgrades. With Release 12.2, that goes out the window, as it will be the last major, difficult upgrade you’ll ever have to make. The Oracle EBS 12.2 release decouples middleware updates from application functionality updates. One on EBS 12.2, you will be able to leverage application updates while still on your current version of middleware.
Upgrading to EBS requires important knowledge about the functional, technical and database aspects of the process. With the help of expert consultants, you can ensure you meet the deadline of December 2021 and make sure your EBS instance is protected with Premier Support. Check out our latest infographic to learn more about what Functional and Technical consult ants oversee during the Oracle EBS R12.2 upgrade.
