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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Certain aspects of implementing and managing the Oracle EBusiness Suite can be risky, time-consuming and resourceintensive. The challenge is to mitigate the risk and automate the process while reducing expense and effort so that the project will achieve the organizations business needs and goals. One thing is certainly clear: the higher the level of automation is, the lower the operational cost of the environment. !

A GUIDE TO EASING ORACLE Executive Summary .................................................................................1 E-BUSINESS SUITE MANAGEMENT Table of Contents .....................................................................................1 Executive Summary .................................................................................2 The Cost of the Oracle E-Business Suite.............................................2 Oracle E-Business Suite: Deployment.................................................2 Oracle E-Business Suite: Ongoing Management ................................2 Finding a Better Way................................................................................3 Options for Object Migration ....................................................................4 Native Tools ..........................................................................................4 Third Party Tools ..................................................................................5 Five Reasons to Love Migrations .............................................................6 Figure 2 Solution to Migration Challenges .......................................6 ROI Analysis..........................................................................................7 Table 1Salary costs to Migrate Objects ............................................7 Table 2Salary costs to address Migration-related errors ...............8 Table 3Total Cost to Migrate Objects................................................8 Unitask Migration Director ......................................................................9 Five More Reasons to Love Migrations, Using Unitask......................... 10 Conclusion.............................................................................................. 11 About Unitask ......................................................................................... 11 ! Contact Us .......................................................................................... 11

10 REASONS TO LOVE OBJECT PROMOTIONS & TABLE OF CONTENTS MIGRATIONS:

Copyright 2011, Unitask, Inc., All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Unitask is a trademark of Unitask, Inc. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. !

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Certain aspects of implementing and managing the Oracle E-Business Suite can be risky, timeconsuming and resource-intensive. The challenge is to mitigate the risk and automate the process while reducing expense and effort so that the project will achieve the organizations business needs and goals. One thing is certainly clear: the higher the level of automation is, the lower the operational cost of the environment. Unfortunately, organizations frequently underestimate the time and effort involved in their Oracle E-Business Suite projects. In fact, one analyst group found that Oracle E-Business Suite projects took 43% more time and 39% more money than anticipated. In this paper, we will outline many of the operational costs and resource drains that can be addressed regardless as to whether the organization is: Implementing the Oracle E-Business Suite for the first time Implementing a new module Managing an ongoing implementation of Oracle

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In addition, we will focus on specific operational aspects of the Oracle E-Business Suite, and we will explore how to execute this resource-intensive and error-prone process using native tools as well as how to simplify and automate this process while eliminating errors using third-party solutions. THE COST OF THE ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE If you are reading this guide, your organization has most likely already made the decision to implement the Oracle E-Business Suite. In fact, your organization may have already implemented Oracle Applications. In either situation, you have probably discovered that the time and cost of implementing and managing the application is quite a bit more than anticipated. You are not alone. ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE: DEPLOYMENT Analysts have found the following with respect to Oracle E-Business Suite deployment: Only slightly more than 60% of Oracle deployments were completed on time. This means that nearly 40% of deployments missed their target rollout dates. Less than 60% of Oracle deployments were completed on budget. This translates into more than 40% of projects costing organizations more than originally anticipated. The dollars can be staggering with an average deployment investment of greater than $5.3 million comprised of software, maintenance, consulting, hardware, personnel and training

ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE: ONGOING MANAGEMENT Even after the deployment is complete, the costs for ongoing maintenance are nearly as staggering. The average three-year outlay for ongoing management of the Oracle E-Business Suite is slightly over $2.0 million comprised primarily of software maintenance and personnel costs. Of course, ongoing maintenance costs assume management of a steady-state environment. If an organization is considering the implementation of new modules, the costs rise once again.

PEOPLE

PROCESS

DATA

FIGURE 1 MIGRATION CHALLENGE

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FINDING A BETTER WAY

Many deployment and management factors contribute to the costs and delays of these projects. Below is a brief outline of many, but not all, of these factors. MIGRATING AOL AND OTHER OBJECTS: Object migration is one of the most timeconsuming, error-prone and resource-intensive tasks. The task involves moving AOL and other objects between Oracle E-Business Suite instances. MIGRATING OTHER ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE COMPONENTS: In addition to AOL objects, administrators, implementers and developers are challenged with efficiently migrating configurations, XML publisher objects, personalizations, custom development, value sets and reports. ENHANCING THE APPLICATION: Aligning the applications interface, workflow and overall capabilities to meet business objectives consumes substantial development and testing effort. CONFIGURING AND MANAGING PRINTERS: Printer management in the Oracle EBusiness Suite is complicated and costly. Printers must be configured in Oracle and then within UNIX, provided you can find drivers for all your enterprise printers. IMPLEMENTING DATA INTERFACES: While certainly more relevant during the implementation phase, developing, testing and implementing one-time use interface code is error-prone and resource-intensive. COMMUNICATING WITH AND CONTROLLING USER ACTIVITY: The ability to send users information about the state of the application and, when required, terminate user activity, is vital to enhancing Oracle E-Business Suite administration. COMPLYING WITH REGULATIONS: Meeting compliance requirements are at the top of almost all IT professionals lists.

While Unitask provides solutions to these problems and more, the focus of this paper is factors #1 and #2: Migrating AOL objects and other Oracle E-Business Suite components. In particular, we will discuss migration as it relates to the IT objective of enhancing Oracle ROI by reducing administrative costs. With more and more companies going to a global (single) EBS instance, IT departments are faced with shorter down times, often fewer than 12 hours a week. Compounding this issue is that object migration may not occur during the monthly close process, further reducing the amount of time that migrations can occur. During downtime, there may be many processes that must occur in addition to custom object migration, and, this all relies on a limited resourceOracle DBAs. Especially in todays economy, IT runs lean. Most large shops have many times more developers than DBAs. In fact with more companies outsourcing the hosting of EBS, the company may actually have no DBAs on staff. Now more than ever it is critical that object migration run smoothly and with a limited amount of human intervention.

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OPTIONS FOR OBJECT MIGRATION

There are two methods for migrating objects from one Oracle E-Business Suite instance to another: native tools or third-party products. In this section, we will explore the pros and cons of both options and then review the ROI for each. NATIVE TOOLS The Oracle E-Business Suite offers several command line tools for migrating objects such as those below: FNDLOAD for moving AOL objects between instances WFLOAD for moving workflow components SQLPLUS for moving database-related custom/extended objects such as packages, functions, triggers and views HOST for moving operating system relevant files (concurrent program sources)

PROS The primary advantage of using native tools is cost. That is, there is no direct cost to use these command line toolsthey are available at no charge to Oracle customers. However, it should be noted that while there are no direct cost, there are substantial indirect costs to the native tools such as education and training. CONS Complexity and the corresponding cost of the complexity are the chief arguments against using the native tools. Here is an example of a FNDLOAD command line instruction used to move AOL objects from one instance to another:

FNDLOAD apps/pwd 0Y mode configfile datafile entity [param]

As if remembering the exact syntax wasnt difficult enough, each parameter in the command line has several options. For instance, there are dozens of configuration files (configfile) each with one or more download parameters. Some complex object migrations may take a DBA some time to migrate. Even though developers follow standards, even slight variations can create more work for the DBA during the migration processes. Finally, developers must review the setup in production after a DBA has completed the migration of a custom object to check for accuracy. Though this is important, it is a further drain on precious resources and time.

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Below are some other disadvantages of using FNDLOAD to perform AOL migrations. In general, these disadvantages can be applied to other native, command line tools used to migrate objects. 1. While memorizing all the command line permutations is possible, it is unlikely that someone other than a highly trained DBA will ever perform this manual- and data-entry intensive process. With a third-party product, this important task can be entrusted to others in the organization with confidence freeing the DBA for other, important tasks. 2. Because of the nature and length of the migration command line instruction, typographical errors are possible. Each typo results in rework, which adds to the time and expense of the project. 3. Resource coordination can be difficult. In reality, the functional specialist documents which objects need to be migrated and communicates that information to the DBA who performs the move. If the instructions are not completely accurate, errors occur. With a third-party product, object migration is simplified to the point where the functional specialist can perform the required migrations without the involvement of the DBA. 4. Administrators must have access to many different technical items prior to executing FNDLOAD command. Among these are the OS user account information, file system access and file transport mechanisms (e.g. ftp or scp). In addition to weakening security, acquiring this information will add both time and expense to the migration project. For more information on FDNLOAD, see Implementing Oracle Service Fulfillment Manager from

Oracle Corporation.
THIRD PARTY TOOLS Third party products, such as Unitask Migration Director, help simplify and automate the process and eliminate the errors of migrating objects from one instance to another. In general, the migration process consists of three major steps when using a third party tool. 1. Defining or modifying the package, or grouping of objects, to be migrated from the source environment 2. Downloading the package to a staging area which can be a secure shared drive or local disk computer 3. Uploading the package to the target environment and applying the package in that environment While simplified, a specific applications ability to add value to these three key steps will determine the real value to the organization.

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FIVE REASONS TO LOVE MIGRATIONS

Migrations are simplified with a third-party product: 1. ELIMINATION OF COMMAND LINE This enables someone other than a DBA to perform the migration process, which, in turn, enables DBAs to do the work they were hired to do, not migrate objects. 2. AUTOMATION & CONTROL By reducing the time required to migrate objects, organizations can perform the process within their maintenance window more easily. In addition, data entry errors are virtually eliminated reducing the time to troubleshoot issues. Taken together, automation and control lead to shorter maintenance windows and more application uptime. 3. PACKAGE REPOSITORY AND PACKAGE HISTORY By maintaining a repository of previously-created packages, administrators can improve their change management processes. In addition, packages created in the development instance that do not require changes can be migrated to conversion, test, QA, training and production quickly and easily further reducing administrative effort. Scheduling facilities allow migrations being promoted to Production to be optimized to minimize the time required to complete the maintenance update. Organizations have the ability to keep the change process in motion at all times and have the ability to mitigate risk by rolling back changes. 4. GUI By leveraging the Oracle E-Business Suite interface, training and support are reduced for those that ultimately perform the migrations. 5. ACTIVITY CONSOLIDATION By enabling the consolidation of migration activity to include AOL objects, configurations, custom development, Flexfields, value sets and reports, organizations can save considerable time.

PEOPLE
Change Creation Deploy the Package

Manual Migration Process

Source Testing

Stage the Package

Package Change

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FIGURE 2 SOLUTION TO MIGRATION CHALLENGES

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ROI ANALYSIS An ROI analysis is perhaps the best way to determine if the use of a third-party product is right for your organization. The three tables below represent worksheets for comparing your organizational cost for migrating AOL objects using the native tools to using a third-party product. For this analysis, the times for the migration product are based on using Unitask Migration Director. Generally, the overall ROI offsets the one-time training costs and annual maintenance fees for upgrades and support of third-party tools. TABLE 1SALARY COSTS TO MIGRATE OBJECTS SAMPLE FIGURES (FOR NATIVE TOOLS) 10 15 10 35 117 DBA $41.86 $4883.67 USING A MIGRATION PRODUCT 0.5 1 0.5 2 6.67 Developer $31.25 $208.33

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DESCRIPTION Number of minutes to prepare an object for migration Number of minutes to migrate an object Number of minutes to deploy an object Total number of minutes to migrate an object Number of hours spent migrating objects per week (for 200 objects) Average hourly salary of the person performing migration Salary cost to migrate

Since developers know more about the custom object to be migrated, who better to create the package definition of what is to be migrated. Developersespecially contract developers dont need to spend a large amount of time writing migration documentation since Migration Director reads the setup in the development instance and creates the package to be migrated. Contract developers dont need access to the VCS system since Migration Director will perform the necessary check in/out and promotions between Development, Test, (QA), and Production. More objects can be processed in less time.

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TABLE 2SALARY COSTS TO ADDRESS MIGRATION-RELATED ERRORS SAMPLE FIGURES (FOR NATIVE TOOLS) 15 15 3.75 $156.98 USING A MIGRATION PRODUCT 0 0 0 $0

DESCRIPTION Number of objects per week with migration related errors Number of minutes to fix each issue Total number of hours spent fixing issues per week Weekly cost to fix migration-related issues

In the table above, developers using a third-party tool dont need to completed detailed setup documents for a DBA to follow, and Custom Objects can be migrated to test and production with zero key stroke errors (since Migration Director Exports and Imports the custom object(s) using standard Oracle tools). As the number of objects that the application is able to migrate increases, the number of objects that must be migrated manually decreases. Consequently, the more objects a product moves, the more valuable it is in terms of reducing administrative workload (manual migrations). TABLE 3TOTAL COST TO MIGRATE OBJECTS SAMPLE FIGURES (FOR NATIVE TOOLS) $5,041 $262,113 USING A MIGRATION PRODUCT $208 $10,833

DESCRIPTION Total weekly cost to migrate AOL objects Total annual cost to migrate objects

Of course, youll need to also add in the cost of the product you select in order to complete your ROI calculation.

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UNITASK MIGRATION DIRECTOR

UNITASK MIGRATION DIRECTOR ZEROERROR OBJECT MIGRATION Unitask Migration Director saves Oracle E-Business Suite professionals time and frustration while saving the organization money and reducing system downtime by relieving the headache associated with migrating AOL and other objects from one Oracle E-Business Suite instance to another. With its ZeroERROR approach and support for more objects than all other products, Migration Director offers a competitive advantage to organizations that use or manage the Oracle E-Business Suite. HOW IT WORKS With Migration Director (see Figure 1), administrators create packages of objects originating from the source Oracle instance and/or the organizations version control system. Then, the package is downloaded from the source instance, uploaded to the target instance and optionally applied to the target instance.

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FIVE MORE REASONS TO LOVE MIGRATIONS, USING UNITASK

1. MIGRATE OBJECTS QUICKLY AND WITH CONFIDENCE With Migration Director, administrators can be confident that object and entity changes made in one Oracle E-Business Suite instance will be migrated to other instances securely and with no errors. 2. CONTROL THE OBJECT MIGRATION PACKAGES With Migration Directors FlexControl technology, administrators can freeze the contents of a migration package, thus ensuring the consistent application of objects between instances. In addition, administrators can, at any time, unfreeze the package, make updates and refreeze the package, thereby providing complete control over object migration. 3. MANAGE CHANGES OVER TIME Migration Director maintains a secure repository of migration packages, and this repository is maintained on all instances. This enables Migration Director users to view, update and reapply any previously-created package. In addition, this historical perspective supports change management and IT auditing requirements. 4. INTEGRATE WITH VERSION CONTROL SYSTEMS Migration Director eliminates the redundant work of synchronizing objects with a version control system. Optionally available down to the individual object level, Migration Directors version control system integration eliminates confusion and streamlines development activities increasing Oracle Applications reliability and uptime. AOL setups are not only versionable, but also all responsibilities for all developers can be exported, and updates can be captured without changing the original package. 5. FLEXIBLE AND CONSOLIDATED MIGRATION ACTIVITY Migration Director enables the migration of many types of Oracle E-Business Suite objects. In addition, MD offers a command line interface to extend its capabilities to meet your organizations unique migration needs.

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CONCLUSION
An efficient and error-free approach to migrating AOL and other objects is but one of many ways to increase the control, lower the costs and reduce the time and effort of Oracle E-Business Suite implementation and management. Organizations have at least two approaches available to them to perform this task native tools and third-party products. Both approaches offer pros and cons. Only after performing an ROI analysis can organizations choose the approach that best meets their needs. To further reduce effort, a migration product should be able to pull objects from either a source environment or an organizations version control system (VCS). In addition, the migration packages that are created should be able to be stored in the same VCS. This aids in the change management process and ensures only tested and approved changes are moved to production. By maintaining a history of previously-created packages, re-application from one instance to the next becomes nearly effortless. Moreover, when paired with VCS integration, AOL migration becomes not only effortless, but also errorless. The flexibility to expand the migration capabilities is crucial to enhancing the value of the investment. Look for a product that offers an interface for enabling the migration of objects that may be unique to your organization.

ABOUT UNITASK
Unitask is committed to helping organizations implement, manage and run their Oracle EBusiness Suite. Unitask creates, sells and supports software products based on experience gained from over a decade of Oracle E-Business Suite implementation projects. Customers of the Oracle E-Business Suite around the world rely on Unitask products to eliminate implementation and operational risk, improve the quality of the application and accelerate timeto-value. For more information, please visit www.unitask.com. CONTACT US Unitask Software 1750 S. Telegraph Suite #107 Bloomfield Hills, MI 48302 1-866-UNITASK