Upgrade or Fusion? replaced by What is the value in the Upgrade?

Last year the top question I was asked was ‘Should I Upgrade or Wait for Fusion?’,    and I said “I am not pushing people to move to Fusion, I really do believe most should upgrade to R12, but I do always say you need to know all the information to make the right decision for your organisation.”

In a follow up posting ‘Chicken or Pasta?’ I talked again about the importance of due diligence; but the tide is turning and there is a new comment I am hearing more and more, “What is the value in the Upgrade?”

If you have ever attended one of my presentations were I have discussed this I am very clear, that your strategy has to be yours, and as long as it is built on knowing all the facts and you can articulate your decision then that is OK. I openly talk about why my organisation Fujitsu has stuck on 11i. Our business is to ‘Design, Build and Run IT systems; design and build are projects and run is a service. Oracle Project and Service Contracts do not work together well and service contracts do not process through projects which we use extensively and so we had to customise the system to suit us. Once the new functionality / ease of support / technology gain gives us enough additional value we will move.

I suggested last May in the posting above that Oracle waive the extended support uplift and they did inNovember (I don’t take full credit for that, but I did ask for it).

I always talk about the value of user groups for learning about the Oracle products and also for their influence on Oracle. OAUG recently published a survey of 327 customers and the facts are very scary, 61% had not upgraded to R12. There have been lots of commentary; Dennis Howlett is the most thorough. He talks about the threat to Oracle of third party suppliers and people simply walking away. I have presented on many options; Upgrade, Re-implement (with or without Business Accelerators), and Migrate to a shared service. I believe that there are these and more options and it is about risk, strategy and business needs. Please tell me you know what your organisation is doing, and if not, then talk to me.

In Support of ODTUG

A few weeks ago the funding program of the ACE Program changed. I think the changes are fair, and said so in this post, one problem was that the program had been so good, very few people had been unsuccessful in obtaining requested assistance that it was taken for granted by many.

The first event to be affected is KScope, the flagship event of ODTUG. Their agenda was set and the changes meant a lot of overseas speakers had to re-consider. Despite this, the final agenda is excellent, which is tribute to the strength of their speakers, and all attendees are in for a great week of education.

They also have Cary Millsap as their keynote speaker and we at UKOUG know just how special that is. KScope also has a reputation for a fantastic Community Day before the conference and amazing networking opportunities, some of which are still under wraps for this year, I wondered how can they top the fireworks on the Queen Mary last year? If you haven't registered for Kscope yet, why not?

UKOUG wants to support ODTUG and I was intending to be at KScope but my employer is having a big reorganisation and I want to be part of the exciting program here so have sadly had to say no,   but I am really pleased that our Vice President Lisa Dobson is able to represent UKOUG at KScope.