Why CEMLIs Matter
With an expiration date of December 2021, Premier Support is nearing its end for any version of EBS below R12.2.
It’s important that you take action now before it’s too late and you enter into Sustaining Support, which only offers limited maintenance and no access to new patches, fixes, or updates.
Besides the support timeline and the degree of support your Oracle EBS instance will have, there are other equally important factors to consider like CEMLI Remediation, which is the focus of this post.
Configurations/Customizations, Extensions, Modifications, Localizations/Internationalization, and Integration, or CEMLIs for short, are key when strategizing for your Oracle EBS upgrade. Nearly all EBS instances ever deployed contain some level of CEMLIs as all customers use their own combination of personalizations to Oracle EBS to make it operate in the exact way they need it to.
Unlike previous Oracle EBS upgrades, in an upgrade to R12.2 oftentimes the technical effort to complete the upgrade outweighs the functional effort.
A traditional upgrade process involves assembling a team of Functional, Technical, and DBA resources through three test cycles (CRP, SIT, and UAT), followed by a Go Live and one month of post Go Live support. In the past, for example, when upgrading from Oracle EBS 11i to R12, the bulk of the effort was Functional in nature due to the new features introduced in R12, such as Subledger Accounting.
The most important new features in R12.2 are Technical and not Functional, so the bulk of the upgrade effort is also technical, with the most prominent technical work being CEMLI Remediation to meet R12.2 standards.
Now, it’s important to note there is both CEMLI Remediation and CEMLI Modernization. CEMLI Remediation is the process of meeting the minimum requirements to make existing customizations work correctly in R12.2, while CEMLI Modernization involves making an extra effort to move an existing CEMLI (e.g., a custom form) from older Oracle technology to newer Oracle technology. Both Remediation and Modernization are important considerations for your EBS roadmap, with Remediation being a near term necessity. CEMLI Modernization is the best case scenario that customers would ideally perform if they have enough time to migrate customizations to the newest technology as part of the upgrade. Unfortunately, given the timeline we specified earlier, for many customers this is no longer feasible.
So, how much effort is actually involved to meet the minimum EBS R12.2 upgrade standards? Let’s dive into what needs to be done to ensure Oracle CEMLI compliance.
The Effort Behind CEMLI Remediation
Based on the number and complexity of CEMLIs, the effort can range from hundreds to thousands of hours. A typical upgrade project spans anywhere from 5 to 7 months, but it depends on the situation of every client.
CEMLI Remediation gets the limelight during an Oracle EBS upgrade because it dramatically impacts the amount of effort in terms of resources and time. If a customer is using standard functionality and zero CEMLIs, the upgrade testing process would be fairly standard and the upgrade could be completed relatively quickly.
But this is rarely the case. CEMLIs are the main culprit when it comes to problems during an upgrade because – unlike standard functionality that has been extensively tested by Oracle already – CEMLIs need to be tested and retested to make sure everything works correctly before the upgrade can go live.
How to Determine CEMLI Compliance
When it comes to CEMLI, your goal should be to eliminate or avoid customizations and use standard functionality whenever possible. You need to set really high standards of what criteria needs to be met in order to determine if customizations are deemed necessary.
We recommend that you follow best practices when customizing Oracle EBS to make sure that your instance adheres to the minimum R12.2 development standards (CEMLI Remediation) and that you migrate customizations to the newest technology where possible (CEMLI Modernization).
Easier said than done, these are the methods to use to assess Oracle CEMLI compliance:
- CEMLI Remediation:
- Ensure adherence to standards by running the Global Standards Compliance Checker (GSCC) and using readiness reports to determine Oracle CEMLI compliance with R12.2 development standards
- Disable obsolete setups and configurations
- Drop obsolete database objects and files
- Validate the upgraded Oracle EBS instance using the new upgrade analyzer
- Replace any customizations made by modification with extensions and personalizations (both for Remediation and Modernization)
- CEMLI Modernization:
- Migrate from Legacy Oracle Reports to BI Publisher
- Migrate from Legacy Oracle Forms to ADF
Putting CEMLI Remediation First
Because a CEMLI upgrade is so important to an upgrade and potentially complex in nature, ITC created the “CEMLI First” approach where CEMLI Remediation can be performed in R12.1, prior to all other aspects of the upgrade to EBS R12.2. The upgrade itself is divided into two parts, the technical part which involves CEMLI Remediation being done in R12.1, and the functional part being done as part of the R12.2 upgrade patching process.
Here are the key benefits of putting CEMLI Remediation and Modernization first as well as the technical improvements that it gives your upgrade project:
- CEMLI Remediation:
- Shortens the timeline of the R12.2 upgrade itself by getting CEMLI Remediation completed and fully tested in the R12.1 instance, reducing the testing cycles required for the R12.2 upgrade
- Both Remediation and Modernization:
- Prepare for potential migration of Oracle EBS to Cloud Infrastructure (both for Remediation and Modernization)
- Gain benefits from newest and better-supported technologies, same look and feel as standard Oracle EBS application components, same features, and functionality as standard Oracle EBS application components
- Optimize employee productivity
- Optimize customer and vendor experience
- Lower cost and complexity of ownership
- CEMLI Modernization:
- Prepare for potential migration or coexistence to Oracle Cloud ERP
- Prepare for potential integration of other siloed applications in the Cloud
- Ensure agility to respond to changing requirements
By prioritizing CEMLI Remediation and Modernization, you can significantly reduce risks, costs, and time spent on your EBS R12.2 upgrade as a comprehensive CEMLI assessment and inventory is created against your instance to analyze how they adhere to functionality in R12.2.
Out of this analysis, a CEMLI plan is put in place to assign resources and perform all the necessary changes in the code of your current R12.1 EBS environment. The necessary tests are performed and the CEMLI upgrade is deployed to production to provide further “real-life” functionality testing that is more robust and exhaustive than the typical tests executed during a three-test cycle upgrade project.
As a result, once the R12.2 functional upgrade project begins,, CEMLIs can be treated more like Oracle standard functionality, reducing the time spent during the upgrade project, which also translates into reduced costs and risks.
Wrapping Up
It’s important to leverage CEMLI analysis tools and services to reduce customizations during your upgrade project to Oracle EBS R12.2 as well as make use of services that reduce the risks and costs of adding components to customizations that you want to use in the new release.
The comprehensive ITC “CEMLI First” approach to remediate CEMLIs is designed to address each pain point associated with upgrading your EBS.
For a more in-depth explanation of CEMLI Remediation and what a strategy around it looks like when upgrading your EBS, please watch our on-demand webinar where our ITC in-house experts go into great detail about CEMLIs and the role they play in your road to upgrading to EBS R12.2.
Of course, as we mentioned above, CEMLI Remediation is one of the several critical actions you need to take now to upgrade your EBS to R12.2. ITC offers several R12.2 upgrade services to help your road to modernizing your Oracle EBS.