Monday, October 13, 2008

Oracle Support and Why upgrading to R12?

Oracle Support

Premier Support:
- Includes certification with new third party products/versions and Oracle products

Extended Support:
- Costs more than Premium Support
- Certification is with most existing instead of new third party products/versions and Oracle products
- Extended Support may not include certification with some new third party products/versions
- So if you find a new problem with an existing certified configuration, Oracle Support will help you.
- If you're still running Oracle 9i you're on Extended Support(which ends July 2010)

Sustaining Support:
- Does not include new updates, fixes, security alerts, data fixes and critical patch updates; new tax, legal and regulatory updates; new upgrade scripts; certification with new third-party products/versions; certification with new Oracle Products
- If you have a question and there's already an answer in Metalink, Oracle Support will point you to it
- If you're still running Release 11.0.3, you're on Sustaining Support(which end Jan 2009)

What's the risk in not upgrading to R12?
- The biggest risk - Security/Performance
- Critical Patch Updates(CPUs)
- CPUs address security vulnerabilities
- Oracle release a new CPU every quarter
- R12 Apps CPUs are cumulative
- Relase 12.0.4 includes the Jan 2008 CPU
- Oracle follows strict compilance with ATG_PF RUP policy(N-1)
* January 2008 CPU will only support ATG RUP 5 and RUP 6
* To stay current on security, you must stay relatively current on ATG RUPs, which means that you must stay relatively current on which releases of the applications you are running
- If Sarbanes-Oxley compilance is important to your company, can you afford to fall behind on security updates?
- If you know there's a Critical Patch Update, and you know what vulnerabilities it fixes, so do hackers

No comments: