Hyperion 11.1.2.4 End of Life
The end of life is nigh for Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) instances below 11.2. All Oracle Hyperion EPM clients on 11.1.2.4 or any other 11.1.x version and below, needed to meet the December 2021 end of support deadline, which unfortunately, is now only a few days away. Meaning that time is no longer an ally and has come barreling down on many digital transformation and modernization strategies for Oracle Hyperion EPM clients.
Back in 2018, Oracle announced that Oracle Hyperion EPM release 11.2 would be the last major upgrade clients would ever need to make as part of their Continuous Innovation program, which pledges Premier Support through at least 2032, which is extended on a nearly year-to-year basis.
With Oracle Hyperion 11.1.2.4 end of life right around the corner, clients are faced with a critical challenge: upgrading to 11.2 or migrating to the cloud. Of course, the time to upgrade to 11.2 and remain under Premier Support is days away as Oracle gave a deadline of end of December 2021 as the due date to upgrade in time.
Now, clients in Oracle Hyperion 11.1.2.4 will enter into Sustaining Support at the beginning of January 2022 with extremely limited support options and no access to new features, improvements, fixes, or security patches.
Oracle Hyperion clients can purchase Market Driven Support, a support offering from Oracle that covers the years 2022 and 2023 which is imperfect but still better than Sustaining Support.
Based on firsthand experience, the lack of Premier Support will likely expose Oracle Hyperion instances to performance issues, security risks, incompatibilities, non-compliance, system outages, added costs, and reliability vulnerabilities.
Oracle Hyperion 11.2 Upgrade Planning
As stated earlier, Oracle Hyperion EPM 11.2 is part of Oracle’s Continuous Innovation program, meaning that Oracle is committed to continuing the ongoing development and delivery of application and underlying technology stack updates without the need of a major upgrade effort. Updates in 11.2 are cumulative and will condense fixes and newly-developed features in a single patch.
Oracle Hyperion 11.2 is the long-term release for Oracle Hyperion EPM, and there are several challenges that need to be addressed before embarking on an upgrade effort as important as the one to 11.2
For starters, the Oracle Hyperion EPM upgrade to 11.2 is known as an out of place upgrade, which means that clients will need to install the system in an entirely new infrastructure, such as a client data center or the cloud.
Oracle Hyperion EPM 11.2 is packed with important updates that deliver a new user experience. Still, clients will carry on using the Workspace capability as opposed to a Simplified User Interface. Clients running the Hyperion Planning solution will evidently experience a new look and feel as the system will be running on a new interface that includes the latest enhancements.
Another game-changer update is the fact that Oracle EPM Architect (EPMA) will not be a part of Oracle Hyperion EPM 11.2 and will instead be replaced by Oracle Data Relationship Management (DRM), which is worth mentioning is somewhat limited and does not come with all the features of the complete solution. For example, DRM in Oracle Hyperion EPM 11.2 only reads and feeds from Hyperion EPM on-premises, there is no governance, and no analytics, to name a few.
Other features that will no longer be a part of Hyperion Planning 11.2 are Hyperion Strategic Finance, Capital Expense Planning, Offline Planning, and the Simplified User Interface, and many more. Along the lines of discontinued features, Hyperion Financial Management will no longer include Analytics, Essbase Analytics Link, and Quantitative Management and Reporting for Solvency.
Upgrading to Hyperion 11.2
As stated earlier, Oracle Hyperion clients below release 11.2 only have two options: upgrade to Oracle EPM 11.2 on premises or migrate to Oracle EPM Cloud.
If the right path for your unique business needs is to stay on-premises, please keep in mind that you need to be on version 11.1.2.4 to upgrade to 11.2 since this is the only supported upgrade path. Any version below 11.1.2.4 will need to first upgrade in place to 11.1.2.4 and then upgrade to 11.2.
As stated earlier, the 11.2 upgrade is an out of place upgrade installation effort so clients need to strategize to install the new software on new hardware. It’s safe to say that the 11.2 upgrade is far more technical than functional, which requires technical upgrade experts on deck who can provide consultation on the best steps to take for the project to be a success.
Once your Oracle EPM system is on 11.2, your support will automatically extend to 2032 and will benefit from extended support for the underlying Windows and Linux operating systems, as well as support for the Oracle database servers. The on-premises upgrade to 11.2 especially makes sense for organizations already running 11.1.2.4 who are in dire need of retaining most of their customizations to safekeep their investments on hardware and hosting costs.
It’s recommended that clients apply any outstanding patches to 11.1.2.4, take a hard look at their hardware to determine which components will house the new software, and partner with technical consultants to perform a fully-assisted or partially-assisted upgrade to 11.2 so all historical data is preserved, as well as plan ahead for any customizations that may be replaced by standard functionality.