Introduction
As the year nears its end, the deadline for Oracle Premier Support for Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) clients below 12.2 is also getting closer. So, what happens if the end of December 2021 arrives and you haven’t taken any action to upgrade your Oracle EBS to release 12.2?
Well, by losing Premier Support, your EBS will immediately enter into Sustaining Support, a far from comprehensive form of support that will only cover existing bugs and not much else. At that point, you will no longer receive new updates, fixes, and security patches.
By working with a desupported EBS, you are exposed to a number of costs and risks that you need to account for so that you preemptively take measures to minimize potential losses. With that being said, it’s important to start building your business case for an upgrade to R12.2 or a move to Oracle Fusion Cloud.
In this blog, we give you a few pointers on Oracle EBS vs Fusion Cloud to discern the right choice for your unique business needs.
When Staying On-Premise is the Right Choice
An upgrade as crucial as the one to Oracle EBS R12.2 for on-premise systems needs careful consideration and planning ahead of time so you can oversee some of the most impacted areas and pay close attention to them.
For example, CEMLIs play a fundamental role in the upgrade, as it’s inherently more technical than functional. By prioritizing CEMLI Remediation, you can get a fair advantage to expedite your EBS upgrade. Still, the process can be strenuous when on your own, so it’s in the best interest of your upgrade project to engage with expert consultants who can assertively look at your CEMLIs and help you identify which need to be moved to the new release of which ones can be replaced by standard functionality.
If you choose to keep your Oracle EBS as an on-premises solution, you can safely do so and be confident that your application will benefit from the latest innovations and security enhancements delivered by release 12.2. Hence, it’s really important that you take action to upgrade as soon as possible.
If you’re still on the fence about staying on-premises or moving to the cloud, here are some key pointers to focus on to help you decide if staying on-premise is the right choice for your Oracle EBS:
- Control. By keeping the EBS system on your location, you have total control and ownership over its security and governance, giving you a superior degree of decision-making power to ensure the environment behaves as you expect it to. You can have an in-house EBS team that maintains the system for optimal performance, standardizing processes along the way. That way, any changes, upgrades, or configurations are done at your command.
- Costs. If strategized appropriately, on-premises yield a lower total cost of ownership compared to the recurring payments spread over a system’s entire lifecycle.
- Connectivity. You don’t have to rely on any external network demands or factors, minimizing the risk of loss of internet for your servers instead of the cloud where access to reliable internet is imperative to remain productive.
Now, let’s explore the cloud choice.
When Moving to the Cloud is the Right Choice
Every organization looking to secure Digital Transformation and ensure business continuity needs to have a cloud strategy in the next decade or so. With that being said, you don’t need to move everything to the cloud right away. Simultaneously, it’s a move that you simply can’t ignore and put on the back burner for much longer, even if your short-term goal at the moment is to get your hands on the 12.2 upgrade as soon as possible to remain under Premier Support.
As the business case for the cloud continues to soar, research shows that cloud deployments deliver up to 3.2x the ROI of on-premise solutions, which is something worth considering for Oracle EBS on-premise customers as it may simplify their ability to decide to go move to the cloud as an easy way to reap returns.
Over the last few years, Oracle has improved Oracle Fusion Cloud to create a robust solution. Yet, many believe it’s best to engage in a “lift and shift” to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), Oracle’s leading cloud solution.
Here are the key considerations you need to consider if you’re pondering a move to the cloud:
- Costs. We know we said costs in the on-premises section as well, but it’s worth mentioning that the cloud offers no upfront hardware or software licensing costs as all the software, hardware, and middleware are maintained by Oracle. Also, there are no unexpected fees. You pay for what you need. To top it off, there are no maintenance costs as there’s no hardware, storage, or disaster recovery to consider.
- Support. Cloud-based software makes it seamless to receive ongoing updates and continuous support for your Oracle EBS. Forget about tedious patches as Oracle takes the wheel and handles all the heavy lifting for you. In addition, bugs are fixed relatively quickly, helping you avoid technical issues effectively.
- Implementation. As opposed to on-premise implementation, the cloud is quick and intuitive to implement. What usually takes months can take a matter of weeks in the cloud. On-premises software is installed on servers and individual computers, making it a much longer process.
- Scalability. Applications on the cloud are very easy to scale up or down, as needed, which is a stark contrast to what would happen in on-premises applications.
- Accessibility. You can access the application from anywhere at any time as there’s no tie to a physical location to access the application.
For more granular information, we recommend that you download our latest infographic, where we’ve rounded up critical business questions that you can answer to identify if Oracle Fusion Cloud or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is the right move for you.
Final Points on Oracle EBS vs Fusion Cloud
We want to leave you with two final key points to consider:
- Oracle Fusion Cloud is a next-generation SaaS suite that delivers a modern experience to support your mission-critical business applications.
- Oracle EBS on-premises needs to upgrade to release 12.2 to benefit from the innovations and security enhancements that Oracle has pledged to deliver as part of their commitment to invest in Oracle EBS on-premises thanks to the Continuous Innovation Model.
If you move to Oracle Fusion Cloud or migrate your Oracle EBS, the important thing is that you take assertive action to modernize your Oracle EBS as soon as possible so you can continue enjoying the great capabilities that Oracle EBS delivers your organization.