Choosing Between Release 12 or 11i

One of the most frequently asked questions at OpenWorld was, "Should I upgrade to 11.5.10 or Release 12?" Release 12 wasn't available at that time. Now that Release 12 is available, the answer is a bit simpler.

Not About the Technology Stack

First, the answer to this question is not about the relative merits about the technology stack for the respective E-Business Suite releases. At the heart of the choice between Release 11i and 12 is a hierarchy of business decisions, decisions that require broad and deep input from the stakeholders in your end-user community.

Assessing the Business Benefits

Back in the days when I was a management consultant, a system selection project could run for months (if not years). As with all business decisions in large organisations, your costs and benefits will likely be weighted by qualitative and political considerations, too. At minimum, if you're deliberating between a Release 11i (11.5.10) or 12 upgrade, I would recommend checking that your existing system selection framework includes variants of the following questions:

1. What's the prioritised list of applications that your business users use today? What are the differences in Release 11i and Release 12 functionality for those applications?
   
   
2. What business advantages, process improvements, and new organizational capabilities will be possible with the new Release 12 features?
   
   
3. What are the new architectural or deployment capabilities in Release 12? How will these new capabilities improve system performance, scalability, availability, manageability, and security?
   
   
4. What investments have you made in adapting your organisation to Release 11i, and vice versa? This might include:
• Employee, partner, vendor, and supplier training
• Customisations and personalisations, including custom Forms, OA Framework screens, workflows, concurrent programs, and reports
  
• Integrations with third-party systems
  
  
5. Which of your customisations, extensions, and personalisations can be replaced with new Release 12 features? What savings will these represent? How much of those investments will carry over to Release 12?
   
   
6. How will Release 12 help reduce your operational costs? What are the incremental costs of Release 12 infrastructure, relative to your current Release 11i infrastructure costs? These costs might include server, storage, and networking hardware and licencing

Applying O/S Patches to Apps Environments

Operating system (O/S) vendors often recommend applying latest patches or a specific patch to fix a specific issue you are facing, so you may wonder if these O/S patches could possibly have a negative impact on your E-Business Suite environment.

Unfortunately, it is not unknown for an O/S patch to have an impact on Oracle software. For example, see:

• Shutdown Hangs Orphaning Dbw0 Lgwr Processes After Applying O/S Patch 117350-30" (Metalink Note 344633.1)

So, how do you identify and mitigate potential risks?

E-Business Suite Certified with Top Level O/S Versions

In general, Apps 11i performs certifications with only the top level operating system version (Solaris 9 or AIX 5.3 for example). Specific operating system requirements such as kernel settings or O/S patch requirements are documented in:

• The platform specific release notes
• Certify
• Metalink notes relating to eBiz itself or the technology components

Oracle Support would not normally discourage customers from applying any additional O/S patches recommended by O/S vendors unless specific issues have been found and documented that affects Oracle software.

Test Thoroughly Prior to Production Rollouts

As with any patching activity, Oracle recommends that you perform sufficient testing in a representative TEST system prior to implementing in PRODUCTION, to ensure there are no issues introduced by any such changes.

Minimizing O/S Patching Risks

So, what proactive steps can you take to minimize the risk? Before applying an O/S patch:

1. Search Metalink for any known issues.
   
2. If you have any specific concerns, pose the question in the Oracle Forums to see if your peers have any experiences they can share.
   
3. Search your O/S vendor's knowledge base and forums for any reported issues.

It is also prudent to have a tested emergency rollout strategy in place to allow you to recover if an issue is only found once implemented in the PRODUCTION environment.

Getting Help with O/S Patch Problems

If you are unfortunate enough to experience problems after applying an O/S patch (hopefully in your TEST environment), raise a Service Request with the appropriate Oracle Support team to get help with identifying the root cause of your issue. Oracle Support will likely expect you to work primarily with your O/S vendor in the initial stages of such an investigation, so you should certainly be engaging your O/S vendor support team as part of the problem resolution process

In conclusion, any change introduces risks as well as the benefits. Planning, research, a healthy dose of paranoia -- and as much testing as possible -- will allow you to minimize and mitigate the risks involved with applying O/S patches, giving the best chance of a successful implementation.

Transparent Data Encryption Certified for Apps 11i

Stories of lost backup tapes have become embarrassingly common. UPS lost Citigroup backup tapes containing personal information for 3.9 million customers. Bank of America backup tapes containing personal information for 1.2 million federal employees were stolen off a commercial plane. Marriot lost backup tapes with personal information for over 200,000 employees and customers. Iron Mountain lost Time Warner backup tapes containing personal information on 40,000 Time Warner employees. And the list just keeps getting longer...

If one assumes that any small physical object can be lost, then the odds of your losing a backup tape increase with every backup that you make.

Encrypting E-Business Suite Data
An option is to ensure that your backups are encrypted with the 10gR2 Database Transparent Data Encryption feature in the Oracle Advanced Security Option, reducing the risk of security breaches if backup tapes are physically lost or stolen. Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) is now certified with the E-Business Suite, allowing you to encrypt selected columns in the E-Business Suite's database files. This encryption is transparent to the E-Business Suite during runtime and requires no E-Business Suite patches. Backups of E-Business Suite database files are encrypted, requiring an Oracle Wallet for decryption.

For complete details, including a list of recommended columns to encrypt, see:
Using Transparent Data Encryption with the E-Business Suite (Metalink Note 403294.1)

US 2007 Daylight Saving Time Updates

Oracle recently held a webcast on the US 2007 Daylight Saving Time changes and their impacts on E-Business Suite environments. A recorded version of this webcast is available online.

The core E-Business Suite DST documentation has also been updated in a number of areas. The latest version is dated "January 31, 2007" and the updates are summarised in the document's change log. Some important clarifications about patching conditions and impact have been made in these latest revisions

The DST 2007 upgrade process should begin now.

References
Impact of US Timezone 2007 Changes on E-Business Suite Environments (Metalink Note 403311.1)