Back in 2018, Oracle made an announcement that changed most Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) roadmaps across the world; Oracle Premier Support would be cut off at the end of December 2021 for EBS clients below release 12.2, Oracle’s most ambitious and comprehensive release to date.
Oracle EBS Release 12.2 is packed with innovations, new features and functionality, and technology updates that secure its place as the latest and greatest release for EBS, truly a no-brainer for those clients looking to modernize their EBS and take sound steps towards furthering their digital transformation journey.
Back then, there was time to play it safe and strategically plan a robust upgrade plan that took into account the four main areas of the Oracle EBS R12.2 upgrade: Project Management, Functional, Technical, and DBA Applications. Unfortunately, EBS clients no longer have the luxury of time as there are less than 90 days to remain under the Premier Support umbrella for lower versions of R12.2.
Many clients are left wondering: what can I expect after being desupported?
Being desupported is a nuanced place to be, exposing your Oracle EBS to unwanted risks and added costs that jeopardize the overall wellbeing of your Oracle EBS software.
What Being Desupported Looks Like
Under Oracle’s pledge to continue to invest, update, and offer support for Applications Unlimited, which of course includes Oracle EBS, Premier Support has been extended through at least 2032 for those clients on release 12.2 and any version after that. While many clients have made the upgrade or decided to migrate to a cloud-based solution, there are still many who haven’t taken any action at all, leaving them to linger in a reality where they will no longer be able to benefit from the ongoing delivery of new fixes, updates, or security patches.
Firsthand, we’ve already seen clients deal with the aftermath of working with some of the much older versions of EBS. Working and maintaining legacy code is a technical debt that most organizations today can’t afford to possess, especially as modern business demands increasingly call for agility, responsiveness, and speed…which are very hard to obtain with outdated code that has many customizations and patches sitting on top of it just to get it to work.
Worth mentioning, by losing Premier Support you also lose access to security patches and as you know, data breaches are among the most costly faux pas that organizations can experience as a result of not working with the latest versions of the software. Data breach losses are in the millions, all stemming from security flaws of working with an unprotected version.
To top it all off, being desupported also means losing some functionality as older versions no longer receive optimizations to perform at their best.
All in all, the costs and risks of being desupported are just too high.
What You Can Do
Get started as soon as you can. Whether it’s by performing an all-around assessment of what your current Oracle EBS situation looks like and what it would take to modernize it, or taking concrete steps to upgrade, migrate to the cloud, or engage in a hybrid co-existence, the time to act is now.
With release 12.2 and the Continuous Innovation model, Oracle is committed to making this the last upgrade you’ll ever have to make, protecting your investment and ensuring your application continues to receive application and technology updates without the costs, effort, and resources needed for a major upgrade.