Some Oracle Users Still Wary About 11i Upgrades

Computerworld - Oracle Corp. last week announced that 900 users have now gone live with new business applications released 18 months ago and that a total of 4,000 implementations are in the works. But some IT managers said they're still concerned about software stability and technical support issues.

Several existing Oracle users said they're either running behind schedule on upgrades to the E-Business Suite 11i applications or are holding off on projects to give the software more time to mature.

Managing 11i upgrades will be a central topic at next week's fall conference of the independent Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG). About 40% of the technical sessions scheduled for the conference in San Diego are related to the Web-enabled 11i software, according to an official at the Atlanta-based user group.

An Oracle spokesman said the software vendor believes that the quality and support issues affecting 11i upgrades "are waning." Moreover, Katherine Jones, an analyst at Aberdeen Group Inc. in Boston, said she hasn't seen any evidence that this is a particularly tough upgrade for users in comparison with Oracle's earlier releases or ones from rival vendors.

But one user said an ongoing 11i project has taught him a lesson. "Don't be the first one on the block to install the latest release," said Tracy Jones, an IT manager at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M. "We like the 11i product, but it was grueling to get there."

Jones said Sandia's upgrade from Oracle's older 10.7 applications will take about a year longer than expected to complete because of problems IT staffers found with earlier versions of the software, particularly a self-service procurement module. In addition, he said, Oracle kept changing the technical architecture between different point releases of 11i.

Most of the 11i applications went live in July, about four months past the deadline set a year earlier. But software patches needed before the procurement module could be turned on weren't available in time, Jones said. Implementation of that module will now start next month and should be finished by March, he added.

E-Business Suite 11i Key details about the current version of Oracle’s e-business applications: The software was released in two stages last year, and Oracle has shipped five functionality updates since then. 11i has a Web-based user interface, which complicates upgrades for users of older, character-based releases.