2013 Year in Review – Oracle E-Business Suite

Here are the Top 5 things in Oracle E-Business Suite world that will have major impact in 2014 and beyond.

1. Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Now Available

2013 started on a low note in Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) World. Many people were expecting some announcement related to upcoming EBS release during Openworld 2012. But all they got it is a extension of support deadline  for existing 11i EBS customers. Oracle finally announced Oracle EBS R12.2 few days before Openworld 2013. This releases packs exciting features like Online Patching, which elevates Oracle E-Business Suite ranking in ERP systems domain. Online Patching will enable large multi-national customers consolidate their ERP systems in different Countries into one Single Global Oracle E-Business Suite instance, as it cuts down the downtime required for patching maintenance window to all most nil.  This is a big plus point for clients who cannot afford downtime because their user base is spread all over the world. 2014 will be a years of upgrades to R12.2 for all clients.

2. 12.1.0.1 Database Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

Around the same time as R12.2 announcement, Oracle certified 12c Database with Oracle EBS. The good news here is they certified Oracle 11i also with 12c Database. This should give EBS clients option to get onto newest version of Oracle Database and take advantage of the new features of 12c database. The effort involved in upgrading database is significantly less than upgrading to newer version of EBS. So i believe many customers will uptake 12c database upgrade before the R12.2 EBS upgrade. Also upgrading database to newer version earlier than EBS, will save some hours during future R12.2 upgrade downtime window.

3. E-Business Suite Support Timelines Updated at OpenWorld 2013

Oracle once again extended the support timelines for 11i customers. They named it as Exception support and it ends on December 2015. During this Exception support period, Oracle will primarily provide fixes for Sev 1 issues and Security patches. So this gives 2 years of additional time to Customers on 11i to migrate to latest R12.2. With typical R12 upgrades taking around 1 year time, The sooner you plan and start your R12.2 migration the better.

4. No to Third-Party Tools to Modify Your EBS Database

Oracle Development warned officially in their blog about use third party tools to modify, archive & purge data in Oracle E-Business suite. Managing data growth in Oracle EBS is a known problem. Now Oracle wants customers to use Oracle Database technologies like ILM, Advanced Compression and Partitioning, to archive the data instead of using third party utilities. Note that all these database features will cost customers additional money in licensing costs. So get your bargaining hat on with your Oracle Account Manager and score some discounts using this oracle Achilles heel namely EBS purging and archiving data.

5. Sign E-Business Suite JAR Files Now

Do you remember the days when Oracle EBS moved from Oracle Jinitiator to Sun JRE for oracle forms? Then be prepared for one more similar thing around oracle forms. With stream of viruses and malware that exploit bugs in Oracle/Sun JRE made Oracle to tighten security around Oracle JRE. Its now required to sign forms jar files with a real certificate. In future releases of Oracle JRE7, Unsigned Oracle forms will stop working completely. So customers caught unaware of this will be in for big trouble with user complaints.