E-Business Suite 11i is getting older and customers who aren’t planning for a Release 12 upgrade should begin preparing for increased Support costs in December 2009.
Typically Oracle provides five years of Premier support on all new application releases and Release 11i (11.5.10.2) will reach its fifth year in November of 2009.
Oracle then offers three more years of Extended support at an additional cost.
What does that mean for December 2009 if you are still on 11i? The additional cost will translate into a 10% increase to your net maintenance fees (110%). For years 2011 and 2012 it is 20% more than the net maintenance fees (120%).
Suppose you don’t want to pay for Extended support? Then you automatically rollover to Sustaining Support. What does it provide? Not much. No updates and no certifications.
Around November of 2012, anyone on Extended Support for Release 11i will then go under Sustaining support.
Many customers won’t feel comfortable with a production environment supported at this level. However the good news is that Extended support costs drop back to net maintenance fees again (100%).
All of this means there is even more justification to consider an upgrade to Release 12 which will provide Premier support through 2012 and Extended support through 2015. And getting it done before November 2009 is a great idea…
For those with more time and interest, check out the details at:
http://www.oracle.com/support/library/oracle-lifetime-support-policy-faq.pdf