Enterprise Business Suite should be first choice for new
Oracle customers, says Lee Geishecker
Users of E-Business Suite, Enterprise and Enterprise One will
all have some migration challenges in moving to applications built
as part of Oracle's Fusion.
Oracle has stated that the starting point for applications in
Fusion will be the Oracle E-Business Suite. It will leverage its
data model and reuse much of the business logic.
Although Enterprise Business Suite is the starting point, it will
not be the endpoint. Oracle plans to move away from the Oracle
forms/database-centric approach used in Enterprise Business Suite
to a service-oriented architected set of applications in the long
term. We believe that the transition to applications built as part
of Fusion will be easiest for EBS customers.
Thus, new customers should choose Enterprise Business Suite if
possible. However, because even Enterprise Business Suite will be
significantly changed in the long term, if it does not meet their
requirements, customers should evaluate Enterprise and
EnterpriseOne as alternatives.
Oracle has more than 1,600 process models that are currently used
to support implementation services. These will be built into
products to support migration and upgrade, allowing users to
compare these standard process models against the user's processes
to determine the match between current implemented applications and
functionality delivered by Fusion.
Accelerated upgrades were a part of the PeopleTools X technology to
move data from one instance to another, and Oracle intends to use a
similar approach to support users going from Enterprise and
EnterpriseOne to the Fusion product. Oracle will develop maps from
the 8.9 and 9.0 releases for all transactional data, and there will
be some automation of most setup data.
However, some setup data will require manual intervention. There
will also be new setup data that will need to configure for the new
applications. If there have been customisations, the maps will show
where the user has extended the basic applications, and the
customer will be able to map these into the new areas of
applications from Fusion or identify the need for extensions
through configuration. Migration to applications from Fusion will
be a substantial project, whatever the starting point.
Oracle will use the implementation workbench originally developed
around Oracle HRMS to support upgrade efforts, making it easier to
extend and set up. Given the investment in an accelerated upgrade
approach and process maps, along with the metadata architecture of
the Enterprise and EnterpriseOne products, Oracle is confident that
it can build automated transfer of operational data and most
configuration data for these systems.
This, however, is a notoriously tricky area, and customers will
need to check Oracle's achievements rather than rely on
promises.
Users are not expected to migrate all the functional or multiple
instances in one step. For example, customers are saying they don't
want their first implementation of applications from Fusion to be a
global migration of their PeopleSoft payroll systems.
Oracle will probably guide customers to exploit the new
applications from Fusion by building around current implementations
and then replacing components piecemeal.
By introducing many additional Web services, creating looser
interfaces between the applications, using hubs, and using the BPEL
Process Manager engine, it would be possible for customers to
implement a Fusion Middleware-based front-office solution or
procurement solution to run on Oracle Fusion Middleware and
interface that into existing systems.
Then, a customer might upgrade those instances individually when
the customer feels that Oracle has proved itself enough to
ultimately pursue a consolidation strategy.
Customers will need to assess carefully whether this type of
approach will deliver sufficient business benefit, or whether a
more radical, and thus riskier, path must be chosen.
Oracle has not decided how it will convert Enterprise Business
Suite, Enterprise and EnterpriseOne licences to Fusion application
licences, but Oracle's intent is to provide "like for like."
It is difficult to identify "like for like." For example,
PeopleSoft E includes many "eApps" that provide HR self-service
functionality. Oracle Enterprise Business Suite has a single module
called HR Self-Service. We do not know at this point the modularity
of Fusion applications. So, it is impossible to know if a
like-for-like mapping is possible.
Because applications built as part of Fusion will be on a new
platform, we believe that there will be a new licensing scheme.
Once a customer wants to license a Fusion application (whether as a
replacement for or an extension to current applications), we
believe that this will trigger a change in licensing. We expect
that Oracle will use Fusion as an opportunity to move customers to
a common licensing scheme.
In addition, we expect there will be some sort of "upcharge" to
move to Fusion applications as part of the move to the new
licensing scheme.
The upcharge may not be explicit, but the new licence model will be
designed so that Oracle gets some incremental revenue.
Today, Enterprise Business Suite, Enterprise and EnterpriseOne
users have different maintenance rates. EnterpriseOne users
typically pay 20% (World customers paid 16%), Enterprise customers
pay 20% and Enterprise Business Suite customers pay 22%. The
standard contract states that this is based on the list price, but
most customers negotiate this to be based on the purchase
price.
We expect the basis of maintenance for applications from Fusion to
remain the same. We believe that Oracle will use the maintenance
percentage it uses for Enterprise Business Suite.
To keep customers happy, we think it will provide discounts on the
maintenance basis so that current customers do not have to pay
higher maintenance fees - initially. Maintenance increases are
usually locked in for five years.
Customers should make sure that contracts have language that
protects them from significant increases at the end of that lock
period (without changes, the contract would revert to the standard
maintenance percentage times the list price).
Lee Geishecker is research vice-president at Gartner
What is Oracle Fusion?
Oracle Fusion Middleware is a family of products designed to
enable enterprises to achieve greater agility, better decisions,
and reduced costs and risk, according to Oracle.
These products include thefamily of products in Oracle
Application Server 10g - Application Development Tools and J2EE
Application Server; Web Services infrastructure; Enterprise Service
Buses and Integration; Business Process Management and Activity
Monitoring; Business Intelligence Tools; Security and Identity
management; Enterprise Portals and Mobile - as well as Data Hubs
and Oracle Collaboration Suite.
The Fusion Middleware allows users to fuse all of their current
applications with their heterogeneous enterprises which include
various packaged, legacy and vertical applications, Java, .net and
the processes and people that rely on information from these
systems to do business, Oracle said.
Source: Oracle