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So I have EBS, what’s next?

By Roy Kidron posted 12-01-2022 01:43 PM

  

Hey there! I’m Roy, and I’ve been working in and around Oracle e-Business Suite (EBS) for over 19 years. A little more than half my life, to be exact.

And if you’re reading this, I’m guessing that you work in one of the 10,000 organizations that have implemented Oracle EBS globally. I’m also guessing that you are either at a crossroads or approaching one. Maybe you’ve reached it today. And maybe it’s five years from now, but there is definitely a fork somewhere in your road.

There are a lot of options for organizations running EBS today, and I thought it would be good to shed some light on these options, bust some myths and hopefully supply you with a map to navigate these next few years with.

As I see it, each EBS instance is a snowflake, unlike any other. With its customizations, extensions, unique set up, localizations, business users and business needs. And your company has most likely invested tens, if not hundreds, of work years, sculpting that snowflake into what it is today, and sometime soon you will need to decide if that snowflake is still good for you.

So, what are your options?

Option 1 – Keep it

The simplest of answers. Just keep the snowflake as it is. If you’re somewhere on Release 12.2, you continue getting Premier Support from Oracle at least until the end of 2033. That’s more than 11 years from the time these words are being written. And Oracle continues to release annual innovation releases every fall, the latest being R12.2.12, which was released on November 18th, 2022.

It is recommended to update to more recent releases occasionally, to enjoy Oracle’s new capabilities, most notably their massive investment in Enterprise Command Centers (ECC), which are powerful dashboards for most modules, through which you can drill down to the actual transactions and manage your day-to-day work. Oracle also keeps extending the Premier Support window every spring by one year, which was done three times already, resulting in the aforementioned December 31st, 2033.

If you are somewhere on Release 12.1 (and we all know it is R12.1.3) then support just ended in December of 2021. However, Oracle has created a two-year runway called Market Driven Support (MDS), allowing you to still receive Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) for security vulnerabilities, and support for Severity 1 and Severity 2 service requests if you acquire this support offering.

If you are still on R12.1, now is the time to upgrade to R12.2. For prolonged support, for a decade’s worth of innovation and for Oracle’s Online Patching resulting in minimal downtime when making changes in the application.

Option 2 – Oracle SaaS/Fusion/Cloud Apps

The most talked about option. And definitely the one getting the most attention and focus from Oracle. This option is for those of you who have grown tired of maintaining customizations and are looking towards a more best practice approach.

With Oracle SaaS you can enjoy Oracle’s latest innovation every quarter, but it also means you cannot customize the SaaS part of the application. You can configure the applications the way you like, but customizations can only be done “on the side,” in PaaS, using Oracle Visual Builder Cloud Service (VBCS) or other technologies, such as Application Express (Apex), and then connecting those custom forms to the SaaS layer using REST APIs.

Moving to Oracle SaaS is a greenfield project. It is a big investment which also requires a strong buy-in from the business users, because it is their business processes that are going to change, most likely back to standard.

Option 3 – EBS on Cloud Infrastructure

Moving your EBS to Cloud Infrastructure is a common technological advancement. It’s dipping your toe in the cloud world, enjoying the advantages of cloud hosting, while also enjoying all your past investments in your EBS. The data center will no longer be your concern, but the functional side of EBS is still your responsibility, including upgrading, patching, development, and ongoing functional maintenance.

There are numerous cloud providers you can do this with, most notably Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI for short, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.

Option 4 – Hybrid

There are countless variations of hybrid, so I will just list a few I have witnessed personally. I have seen multiple organizations implement Cloud HCM first, and then Cloud ERP a few years later. I have seen organizations implement Cloud EPM for financial reporting, coexisting side-by-side with their on-prem EBS. I have seen organizations keep their core financials on EBS, while moving all their subsidiaries to Cloud ERP. Some organizations take their financials to Cloud ERP, while keeping their logistics and supply chain systems on-prem. And I’ve seen organizations using Cloud EPM for financial reporting, getting all its data from SAP!

 

In closing, there are many alternatives out there, but there is also a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt being spread around. Do not believe everything you see, hear, and read. Listen to yourself, to your IT, to your business process owners, and make intelligent, informed decisions. I hope I was of service, and feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn and ask me additional questions.

Who knows, maybe I’ll even have some answers.

 

Roy Kidron, Product Manager, Panaya