Oracle EBS R12 vs Fusion Apps – Which Should You Choose?

Let’s talk about R12 vs Fusion

You have a decision to make: Extended support for Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS)11i is going to end soon – should you opt for Oracle EBS R12 or Fusion Applications?

It’s easier for SAP users, who have one single core ERP product to choose from. But Oracle offers two viable options: upgrade to the latest Oracle EBS R12 (either 12.1.3 or 12.2.12) or switch to Oracle Fusion Applications (Now Oracle Cloud ERP).

This has presented a real dilemma to quite a few organizations, as is also reflected in various online debates.

Panaya’s Oracle experts have been called for consultation on this dilemma many times, so here’s our take:

The Benefits of Making the Leap to Fusion

It’s certainly tempting to move to Fusion. Here are some reasons why:

Next-generation Business Applications solution

Oracle’s Fusion Applications represent a significant evolution in the realm of enterprise business applications. They combine the best features from Oracle’s extensive repertoire, modern technologies, and a user-centric design approach to offer businesses a flexible, efficient, and forward-looking solution.

Some benefits include:

1. Flexibility: The modular design allows businesses to tailor their Oracle Fusion Applications adoption journey based on specific needs and priorities.
2. Efficiency: Integrated analytics and role-based experiences ensure that users can make informed decisions quickly, driving efficiency.
3. Future-Proof: Leveraging modern technologies ensures that Oracle Fusion Applications are built for both the current and future IT landscapes.
4. Consistent User Experience: With features taken from Oracle’s best-of-breed applications, users often find Oracle Fusion Applications intuitive, especially if they’ve used other Oracle products.

Best-of-breed from enterprise solutions

Oracle Fusion Applications can be seen as the culmination of years of industry expertise and market leadership that Oracle accumulated through its strategic acquisitions. By cherry-picking the best features from each of these acquired products, Oracle ensured Fusion stood out as a premier, comprehensive, and integrated enterprise application suite.

Service-oriented architecture and SaaS model

Oracle Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) refers to the suite of products from Oracle that help organizations create, deploy, and manage integrations and services in a standardized manner. SOA solutions enable disparate applications and services to communicate with each other through well-defined interfaces. Oracle’s SOA offerings cater to this requirement, making it easier for businesses to adopt a service-oriented approach and benefit from flexibility, reusability, and agility.

Here’s a brief overview of key components and aspects of Oracle’s SOA Suite:

1. Oracle BPEL Process Manager: BPEL stands for Business Process Execution Language. This component allows users to design, deploy, and manage the orchestration of services. It is especially useful for designing complex workflows and long-running processes.
2. Oracle Service Bus (OSB): OSB is an enterprise service bus used for connecting, mediating, and routing messages between different services and applications. It acts as a backbone for service discovery and integration.
3. Oracle Business Rules: This is a rules engine that can be easily integrated into SOA processes, enabling businesses to modify rules without having to change the underlying application or business processes.
4. Oracle Human Workflow: Supports human interventions and tasks within SOA applications. This could be approvals, reviews, or other human-centric tasks.
5. Oracle Complex Event Processing (CEP): Enables real-time event detection and processing. It’s useful for scenarios where you want to act on a series of events as they happen.
6. Adapters: Oracle provides a wide variety of adapters to connect with various types of systems, such as databases, messaging systems, legacy systems, and third-party applications.
7. Management and Monitoring: Oracle SOA Suite is integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager, which provides comprehensive management and monitoring capabilities for deployed SOA applications.
8. Security: The suite incorporates robust security features like authentication, authorization, confidentiality, and integrity of the services.

All in all, it certainly isn’t a bad choice. You can start getting ready to Prepare for the Cloud by Taking These 5 Practical Steps » 

Now Why You Might Want to Consider Oracle EBS R12.x

Oracle Fusion is great but, if you’re using Oracle EBS 11i now, upgrading to R12 Not only is 11i soon to be unsupported, but there are several advantages to R12:Oracle R12 offers significant improvements over 11i.

Oracle EBS R12 was more than just an incremental upgrade from 11i. It brought about substantial functional and architectural changes that addressed many of the pain points experienced by 11i users. This ensured that organizations using the Oracle E-Business Suite could better adapt to the evolving demands of the global market and enjoy enhanced efficiency and effectiveness in their operations.

It’s a direct upgrade

In their approach to the Oracle EBS R12 transition, they sought to minimize disruptions and maximize continuity for businesses. The direct upgrade path, combined with comprehensive tools, resources, and support, made the shift from 11i to R12 considerably more straightforward than typical major software migrations.

The shift is significantly easier in a number of ways:

1. Data Compatibility – Oracle EBS R12 was designed to be directly compatible with the 11i data model. This meant that migrating data – a major challenge in most software upgrades – was made considerably simpler.
2. Upgrade Tools and Path – Oracle provides an upgrade wizard for R12, which is a toolset designed to automate and streamline many key aspects of the upgrade process from 11i.
3. Customizations – While some customizations might need re-evaluation or tweaking, the Oracle R12 upgrade process aims to preserve and migrate customizations wherever possible, reducing the effort required to reimplement them.
4. Training and Adoption – While R12 introduced many new features, the core functionality that users were accustomed to in 11i remained relatively consistent, making it easier for users to adapt. Oracle also provided an array of training resources tailored for the R12 upgrade. This ensured that businesses could efficiently upskill their teams for the new environment.
5. Testing – Many of the test scripts used for 11i can be reused or slightly modified for R12, reducing the time needed for test preparation.
6. Patching and Support – Oracle released cumulative updates for R12, which means businesses can apply a single patch set to get all previous updates, simplifying maintenance.

No need to switch to an entirely new system

Transitioning to Oracle EBS R12 from 11i is not about shifting to a completely new system but rather upgrading and enhancing the existing one. While there are significant advancements and features in R12, Oracle made sure that businesses wouldn’t feel like they’re migrating to an entirely alien environment. This approach reduced disruptions, preserved investments, and ensured that businesses could leverage the latest features without a massive overhaul.

Leaping from 11i directly to Oracle Fusion can be too much

This can be a considerable jump, both technically and functionally. The Oracle Fusion Application represents a new paradigm in terms of service enabled architecture, user experience, and functionality, and transitioning to them from a significantly older version like 11i can present several challenges.

And…One More Thing to Consider

R12 runs on Oracle Fusion Middleware – just like the Fusion Applications do. This means that you can upgrade to R12 and immediately enjoy some of the most valuable ERP functionality available, while also gaining a platform that is very similar at its foundation to Oracle Fusion.

Your upgrade will be relatively painless compared to bringing in an entirely new ERP, especially if you use an Upgrade Automation solution. You can then start bringing in aspects of Fusion Applications at a measured pace (such as Fusion HCM), getting just the parts of it you most want at first, and then eventually building toward a system that is completely Oracle Fusion.

Fusion may be the future of Oracle’s ERP offerings. It’s a future that many Oracle EBS “shops” should consider embracing in the foreseeable future, but you don’t necessarily have to make the leap immediately.  Oracle R12 gives you so much, not the least of which is a convenient entry point to Fusion Applications in an easy and controlled manner.