An Oracle White Paper

November 2013, Edition 2

Which Oracle E-Business Suite Release Should
You Target: 12.1 or 12.2?
Which Oracle E-Business Suite Release Should You Target: 12.1 or 12.2?

Which Oracle E-Business Suite Release Should You Target: 12.1 or 12.2?


1
Introduction
On September 19, 2013, Oracle announced the General Availability of Oracle E-Business
Suite Release 12.2, continuing our Applications Unlimited commitment to ongoing releases
and innovation for the current application product lines.
Soon after, at OpenWorld 2013, Oracle announced changes to support timelines for prior E-
Business Suite releases to provide customers with support for stable operation while they
complete the upgrade to 12.1 or 12.2. For more information on the changes to support
timelines, see Doc 1495337.1.
E-Business Suite customers on 11i or 12.0 now have the choice to move either to 12.1 or to
12.2. A direct upgrade to 12.1 is supported from 11.5.9 or higher, and a direct upgrade to 12.2
is supported from 11.5.10 CU2 or higher.
Its important that 11i and 12.0 customers plan to complete the upgrade to 12.1 or 12.2 while
still within the support window. Support timelines for all E-Business Suite releases are
documented in the Oracle Applications Lifetime Support policy.
This white paper discusses some considerations for choosing between a 12.1 and a 12.2
release target. The latest edition of this white paper is maintained as Doc 1592197.1.
Which Oracle E-Business Suite Release Should You Target: 12.1 or 12.2?

2
When Should You Choose 12.1?
Consider targeting 12.1 if any of the following circumstances applies to your organization:
You prefer to target a release on which Oracle has thousands of live customers.
You would like to stay on 12.1 for 3-5 years before upgrading to 12.2.
You need to move from a release below 11.5.10 with no direct upgrade to 12.2.
You prefer to target a release on which Oracle has thousands of live customers.
Release 12.1, available since May 2009, has thousands of customers running live on it, representing a
variety of industries, geographies and functional footprints. If your organization prefers to adopt a
release on which thousands of Oracle customers are already running live, then strongly consider a 12.1
release target.
You would like to stay on 12.1 for 3-5 years before upgrading to 12.2.
Release 12.1 includes major architectural improvements to the Financials products to support global
and shared service operations. It also includes significant enhancements to other product areas,
including Procurement, Supply Chain Management, Asset Lifecycle and Service, and Human Capital
Management, providing increased opportunity for process improvement and automation than was
available in 11i. See the 12.1 and 12.2 Release Content Documents (RCDs) for details on 12.1
enhancements and new features.
Because the upgrade from 11i to 12.1 involves significant changes in Financials data model and
functionality, an 11i to 12.1 upgrade will require greater involvement from business process owners
and functional analysts than was required for prior, more technically-focused upgrades, such as the
upgrade from 11.5.9 to 11.5.10.
The upgrade from 11i to 12.2 includes the Financials architecture changes, and adds some 12.2-specific
technical changes. These include the move to Online Patching, the uptake of WebLogic Server, the
required move to Oracle Database 11gR2, and the required switch from Oracle Single Sign-On to
Oracle Access Manager.
Some organizations may prefer to phase their adoption of 12.2 first upgrading to 12.1, and leveraging
the many functional advances available there for 3-5 years, before upgrading to 12.2. Such an approach
allows organizations to separate the Financials-focused 12.1 upgrade from the technically-focused 12.2
upgrade.
The upgrade from 12.1 to 12.2 typically will be much smaller than the upgrade from 11i to 12.x, mainly
involving your technical IT team, with much less involvement from business process owners and
functional analysts than is required for the 11i to 12.x upgrade. For more information on 12.2 technical
planning considerations, see the Oracle E-Business Suite Technical Planning Guide, First Edition, Release 12.2,
Doc 1585857.1.
Which Oracle E-Business Suite Release Should You Target: 12.1 or 12.2?

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You need to move from a release below 11.5.10 with no direct upgrade to 12.2.
A small number of E-Business Suite customers are running on release levels below 11.5.10 CU2, the
minimum level from which a direct upgrade to 12.2 is supported. Customers on 11.5.9 or higher can
directly upgrade to 12.1. Customers at release levels below 11.5.9 should consider a reimplementation.
When Should You Choose 12.2?
Consider targeting 12.2 if any of the following circumstances applies to your organization:
You need the high availability provided by Online Patching.
You want the functional enhancements that are in 12.2.
You prefer to invest in a single project to upgrade directly to 12.2.
You need the high availability provided by Online Patching.
If maintaining extremely high availability of your E-Business Suite system is critical to your business
for example, you find it difficult to take a patching or maintenance down time because you are a
manufacturer or for other reasons have users active on the system around the clock then strongly
consider a 12.2 release target.
Release 12.2 introduces Online Patching to dramatically reduce patching and maintenance down times.
With Online Patching, patches to the Oracle E-Business Suite are applied while the production system
is fully available and users continue to do work. Only a short downtime is required to switch end users
over to the newly-patched version.
For more information on Online Patching, see the Oracle E-Business Suite Technical Planning Guide, First
Edition, Release 12.2, Doc 1585857.1.
You want the functional enhancements that are in 12.2.
In addition to Online Patching, there are hundreds of new features in 12.2 that organizations can
leverage to further automate their business processes. If any of these features is important to your
business, then strongly consider a 12.2 release target. See the 12.1 and 12.2 Release Content
Documents (RCDs) for details of the new 12.2 features, which are summarized below:
ERP
Enhanced Labor Costing with Projects and Payroll
Project Cost Breakdown Structure
Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) for Public Sector: Electronic Contract File, Concurrent
Modifications, and more
Channel Revenue Management: Simplified HTML Flows
Which Oracle E-Business Suite Release Should You Target: 12.1 or 12.2?

4
SCM
Order Management: Selling Subscriptions
Order Management / Warehouse Management: Advanced Catch Weight
Warehouse Management: Mobile Personalization
Manufacturing Execution System: Electronic Kanban (E-Kanban)
Manufacturing Execution System: Express Transact for Serialized Manufacturing
Supply Chain Management: Contingent Worker Support
ALM and Service
Project Accounting for Service Operations
Service: Simplified HTML Flows
Enterprise Access Management: Safety Management: Lockout Tagout
Oracle will continue to provide user experience modernization and other new functionality on the 12.2
code line with periodic release updates, similar to the 12.1.2 and 12.1.3 release updates we provided on
the 12.1 code line. In addition, we will deliver many exciting new products to customers on both 12.1
and 12.2. These will include new E-Business Suite Extensions for Oracle Endeca, new Mobile
Applications, new In-Memory Applications, and new Advanced Testing Packs for the Oracle
Functional Testing Suite for Oracle Applications.
You prefer to invest in a single project to upgrade to 12.2.
Upgrading to a major new release of E-Business Suite requires a significant investment in time and
resources. Some organizations currently on 11i or 12.0 will prefer to invest in a single project in which
they upgrade directly to 12.2, while others will prefer to simplify the move off of 11i or 12.0 with an
interim upgrade to 12.1, deferring the upgrade to 12.2 and Online Patching until 3-5 years down the
road.
The move to 12.2 and Online Patching represents a transition for your technical IT staff, involving
new concepts, terminology, tools, technology, and operational practices. For more information on
Online Patching and other 12.2 technical considerations, see the Oracle E-Business Suite Technical Planning
Guide, First Edition, Release 12.2, Doc 1585857.1.
For customers who find the technical progression to 12.2 challenging, Oracle offers an upgrade option
that does not require your IT organization to acquire all of the necessary skills. Through a packaged
offering called Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Upgrade Factory, Oracle can help customers move
from an 11i on-premise instance to a Release 12 managed cloud-based instance quickly and with low
risk. For more information, see E-Business Suite Upgrade Factory: Upgrade to Release 12 in the
Cloud with Oracle Manage Cloud Services.





Which Oracle E-Business Suite Release Should
You Target: 12.1 or 12.2?
November 2013, Edition 2
Author: Anne Carlson
Contributing Authors: Nadia Bendjedou, Hillary
Davidson, Cliff Godwin, Jeanne Lowell, Lisa
Parekh, Millie Wang, Lauri Williams
Oracle Corporation
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