The Triora Group

The one bad thing about panels at Collaborate is that there generally isn’t any material available afterward. Of course, the good thing is that panels provide an opportunity for an audience to ask all the questions they want of a group of distinguished industry experts. So read on about three panels at Collaborate that we think were very important because they cover the three major areas that were on the minds of everyone at the conference – Release 11i, Release 12 and the Fusion Applications.

The Release 12 Upgrade Panel

John Stouffer, Triora Group, moderated the Release 12 Upgrade Panel, which sparked some lively discussion from the packed audience and panel members Sandra Vucinic, Vlad Group, Bill Dunham and Mike Barone, OATC, and Eugene Weinstein, Sharon Leong, and Max Adreruis from Oracle.

One of the best parts about this panel was getting to hear some insights from Oracle about their own Release 12 upgrade. Oracle suffered all thedisadvantages that comes with being on the very edge of the bleeding edge -running brand new code that was being changed throughout their upgrade process - and also working with an incredibly large database - starting with 12 terabyte, and finishing with 13.6 terabyte. Sharon Leong said that the upgrade took about a year, and that Oracle separated the database upgrade to Oracle10g from the E-Business Suite upgrade by a week.

The E-Business Suite part of the upgrade took less than 3 1/2 days and upgraded 8 years of history out of a total of 21 years. The fact that Oracle is using Release 12 internally is very important for decision makers in assessing when they should upgrade to Release 12. Oracle is clearly motivated to move as quickly as possible to resolve issues.

The audience asked, and the panel answered, many questions. Here are the highlights:

- Asked if the database grows very much between Release 11i and Release 12, general concurrence was to expect 10-20% growth, but understand that it really depends on what modules are implemented.

- Asked about the tradeoffs of upgrading versus re-implementing, the panel suggested that re-implementation requires more examination of data and business processes. Companies generally choose to re-implement if there is a substantial change in how they do business. Re-implementations always take more time than an upgrade. Reimplementation does have the advantage of allowing a fresh start to using the E-Business Suite.

- Asked if we should upgrade to Oracle11g, Sandra Vucinic recommended, and Max Adreruis agreed, staying with Oracle10g for now. While Oracle11g is certified with Release 11.5.10.2, it currently is only certified with Windows and Linux and is not yet certified with Release 12.

- One audience member asked how 7×24 hour businesses that can’t have any downtime do upgrades. According to the panel, 7×24 shops have to have a period where they manually take transactions (that is, they write them down and then enter them later after the upgrade is complete). Tuning the upgrade process is the key to minimizing this effort. Among the ways to make an upgrade go faster (this is true both for Release 12 and Release 11i upgrades):

o Consider leasing or borrowing (from development environments) additional CPU and memory for the upgrade so that more can be done simultaneously.

o Upgrade other parts of the architecture ahead of time - upgrade to the latest version of JRE and upgrade the database ahead of time.

o Use a pre-patched (staged) $APPL_TOP

o Use admerge to merge patches

o Document how long each step should take, so you know immediately if something is not working as fast as expected

o Adjust the number of workers (after testing thoroughly) to the maximum that the production environment can handle

o Test on the production server to avoid unexpected problems

Collaborate 08 Release 11i Upgrade Panel

John Stouffer, Triora Group, moderated the Release 11i Upgrade Panel. Panel members were Sandra Vuninic, Vlad Group, and Mike Barone and Bill Dunham from OATC.

A poll of the audience showed that most attendees were running either Release 11.5.9 or Release 11.5.10.2. Attendees were evenly distributed as to RDBMS Versions 9i and 10g.

Highlights of the panel discussion included:

- Several long running jobs were mentioned that have no resolution from Oracle. The audience was asked to send specific Service Requests (SRs) to Steven Chan at steven dot chan at oracle dot com.

- Steven Chan’s blog (http://blogs.oracle.com/schan/) was highly recommended as a great source of information about changes in the E-Business Suite, including Release 12 and Fusion as well as Release 11i. Steven is Oracle’s Director of Oracle Applications Technology Integration.

- Oracle’s R12 Upgrade forum was recommended as a good source of information.

- The panel recommended using a pre-patched (staged) APPL_TOP for final upgrades to remove the need for running the C/G portions of the U (unified) driver during an upgrade.

- One conversation about a different approach for zero downtime upgrades was discussed in detail - the panel members stated that the approach seemed plausible but would not be documented on MetaLink and Oracle support would be of limited help.

- Bill Dunham spoke about the need for controlled project management to closely monitor the upgrade for success.

The Fusion Council Panel

John Stouffer moderated the Fusion Council Panel. Panel members were JPL’s Floyd Teter, OAUG Fusion Council Chair; Basheer Khan, Innowave; and Steve Miranda, Vice President of Fusion Applications Development at Oracle. The OAUG Fusion Council shares knowledge and information about the next generation of the Fusion Applications. They provide education via presentations and eLearning webinars on Fusion Applications components.

Panel highlights included:

- There were several questions concerning the functionality that would be available with the Fusion applications. Steve Miranda said that CRM and GRC would be included in the new applications, but manufacturing would not. Steve also stated that the release would be limited to early adopters and would not be made generally available. Core Human Resources and Financials functionality will also be included in the first limited release as well as silo applications based on the AIA Foundation. Steve encouraged the use of the AIA Foundation Pack now instead of waiting.

- Steve said that Applications modules can be upgraded independently.

- Purging of unused historical or system data before upgrading to the Fusion Applications was recommended.

- Oracle Forms and PeopleTools will finally be obsoleted with the Fusion Applications.

- Licensing will be on a “like” to “like” basis, but any new functionality will require additional licensing.

- Floyd Teter, Fusion Council Chair, explained that the upgrade to the Fusion Applications will be an A to B upgrade, where the target. environment will need to be created first and then the old data will be upgraded into the new Fusion Applications.

- BI will be embedded in the Applications (including Hyperion)

- New Fusion Council plans were announced at the panel meeting with a “stay tuned” for details message.

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