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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?
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.
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Which Oracle E-Business Suite Release Should You Target: 12.1 or 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.
2
Which Oracle E-Business Suite Release Should You Target: 12.1 or 12.2?
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.
ERP
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Which Oracle E-Business Suite Release Should You Target: 12.1 or 12.2?
SCM
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Which Oracle E-Business Suite Release Should Copyright 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
You Target: 12.1 or 12.2?
November 2013, Edition 2 This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This
Author: Anne Carlson document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in
Contributing Authors: Nadia Bendjedou, Hillary law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any
Davidson, Cliff Godwin, Jeanne Lowell, Lisa liability with respect to this document, and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This
Parekh, Millie Wang, Lauri Williams 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.
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