Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) is the backbone of your mission-critical operations that help keep your business up and running. From capabilities like Enterprise Command Centers, Oracle Financials, Order Management, Logistics, Procurement, and Manufacturing, to name only a few, protecting your EBS investment needs to be a priority.
On January 1st, 2022, clients who don’t upgrade to 12.2 will enter into Sustaining Support and lose access to new fixes, updates, and security patches.
When moving to release version 12.2.x, EBS clients will benefit from Oracle’s continuous innovation model that offers regular updates delivered with the latest functionality, features, and fixes, without the strain and effort of performing a major upgrade.
In September 2020, Oracle announced the Oracle EBS latest innovations, highlighting many key enhancements that further optimize your EBS. A sample of these enhancements include:
- Two new and enhanced Enterprise Command Centers (ECCs) are available for version 12.2..4 and higher).
- Updates to smartphone apps with the EBS Mobile Release 9, available for 12.1.3 and 12.2.x releases.
- EBS Cloud Manager for EBS on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to increase automation and help enterprises run Oracle EBS on OCI. Available for 12.1.3 and all 12.2.x releases).
Consistent with their continuous innovation model for EBS, these enhancements signal Oracle’s commitment to delivering ongoing updates without major upgrades involved. This is paired with Premier Support for EBS 12.2, which, as of right now, will be offered until at least 2031, with what seems to be 1-year increments for new releases.
With all of this in mind, one of the most pressing questions in our clients’ minds is: how quickly can I get the upgrade done, and how much of it can I do myself?
While it’s hard to put a specific number in terms of how quickly the update can get done, from working on hundreds of upgrade projects with our clients, we’ve seen an average of six months as the approximate amount of time to complete the upgrade. Of course, this all depends on the complexity of key aspects to consider, like data purging and archiving, CEMLI Remediations, and other technical efforts.
Now that you have a ballpark estimate of time, let’s talk about your options to share responsibilities with an experienced team of consultants as opposed to having to hand in the upgrade project as a turnkey project.
IT Convergence created strategic resource-sharing options to successfully complete your upgrade combining your internal staff with ITC expertise across Project Management, Functional Consulting, CEMLI Remediation, and Applications DBA areas.
With these resources on hand, still, there are EBS clients who are not taking action. Some of their indecision stems from the fact that their 12.1 EBS instance still supports their basic operations adequately and see no immediate value in making the upgrade now.
In reality, the upgrade from 12.1 (and versions below) to 12.2 is a matter of when and not if. You need to upgrade if you want to protect and modernize your investment and safe keep its integrity with the continued delivery of security patches, new features, and updates.
For example, EBS version 12.1 still applies patches “the old fashioned way” where users need to be offline before applying a patch. In Oracle EBS 12.2, the new normal is online “hot” patching which allows users to continue to work in the system at the same time the patch is being applied, dramatically reducing system downtime requirements.
Learn more about the differences between Oracle 12.1 and 12.2 by downloading this infographic and don’t waste another day in upgrading your EBS to release version 12.2.x.
We’re here to help you, as involved as you need us to be.