Code Courrency

Hi All,
Just wondering what are you doing to maintain your code currency. How often are you applying New tools release, Updates etc to your system. I know there are benefits and risks of remaining current and wanted to check what others are doing in their companies
Thanks in advance for your answers

What are the risk to stay current?

Hi Bruno,

It increases our testing cycle and if we miss something in our testing, we will be introducing that bug in our production.

Applications get upgraded every 4 - 5 years

Tool Releases as needed / desired (18+ months?).

Ok,
this is my point of view:
Implement/upgrade JDE in a short time frame, go live, be stable and then drop the support. Upgrade the release next 10 years.

Be stable and drop support, eh? Too funny.

Paraphrasing Roscoe Pound: JDE must be stable, but it must not stand still.

If after one or two year from go live your system is not stable there is something wrong in your implementation.

JD Edwards software is very good. Yes, there are bugs, but if you are not able to fix and be stable in a couple of years.... it's not a software problem.

Bruno, That is all well and good providing your business doesn't change. I can't speak for others, but there are more than a few things we do differently now than we did at your two year cutoff. We were stable then, and we are stable now, if we had dropped support, we either would not be stable now, or we would have a highly customized system.

JMHO

Tom

Tom, you have a different experience and it's ok.

I worked for different clients and never seen important Service Request opened after two years. Of course there are different factors (business requirements, OS upgrade, platform change,etc...) but from the experience of my clients I can say there is no advantage to continue with the support contract. Many company offers a good support service on JD Edwards as you need.

Just my opinion and experience.

Regards

To me it really depends on WHAT is stable. If it is BUSINESS logic that has problems you have the option to take care of that yourself since we have access to all the business logic source code. Hell, we have Oracle support and when we find bugs in the business code we generally fix them ourselves as that has proved time and time again to be the least painful, most effective way to solve the issue. In fact we rarely even open a call with Oracle support since that always turns out to be an exercise in futility.

On the other hand, if you have a problem with the TOOLS release then you are kind of at the mercy of Oracle support... not really a whole lot of options to fix those yourself. If, as Bruno states, you are stable for a couple of years from a tools release perspective then it might be safe to drop Oracle support... unless your business changes and you need to use a new technical feature of JDE like say Business Services. Then you better hope that they work, otherwise you might be in trouble.

This could be interesting:

73% Oracle customers upgrade to stay supported, no reported ROI

Hi Jaise,

Similar to Larry tools every 2 years or so and major release (apps) every four years. During our current upgrade from 8.12 to 9.1 we're went code current for existing modules and we apply ESU's really only as needed for implementations.

On the topic of tools in terms of overall management costs its always worthwhile to be up to date. That gives you amongst other benefits, better UI and compatibility with back end software that you might desire.

Malcolm

Bruno,

I actually agree with you.

If your company tightly controls costs and wants to maximize return on investment then currently the best path is to upgrade to latest release, get it stable, then drop maintenance for 5+ years. Assuming you aren't running payroll.

This is not a technical decision - its a business decision prompted by the rapacious maintenance charges from companies like Oracle and SAP (SAP is slightly worse than Oracle in my opinion).

What makes sense depends on your company culture, finances, and application needs. However consider this: Most JDE apps are functionally the same as they were 10 years ago . . .

Yes Larry, exactly what I mean.

Here's my $.02

Before I moved into the consulting world, I worked for a company that dropped support for three years. By the end of year three, the tools were significantly out of date. They were running on windows and sql. That OS and database doesn't sit still. After three years, their policy was to retire a server and upgrade. Having no access to a current tools release was a big challenge.

Now that I am in the consulting world, I am working with clients from XE up to 9.1. Our clients that are up to date have considerably less stability issues.

As for a business case, if something goes catistrophically bad on a server and the only option is a rebuild (and we all know that happens), what's easier to rebuild? A current server with a current OS, current java, current database, current application server, current jde code and tools release, or something that is five or ten years old and the foundational pieces are long since retired and out of support? How many times have we seen a post on this list of someone looking for an old tools release? Has anyone tried asking Microsoft for a copy of Windows NT? Or IBM for Websphere 4?

JDE is a critical business application. It doesn't make sense to gamble with it.

- Gregg

I hear your points Gregg and they have merit. However with the advent of VM and the ability that gives to run old software on new hardware I don't think that staying current because of hardware and software dependencies is as important as it used to be.

Hmm... Looks like I got people talking on this... Sorry I was on vacation and hence did not get to check this.

I kind of agree with the you about dropping the support. However, we found an interesting dynamic when we wanted to do this couple of years back. Over all our system was stable and we really did not had much calls to Oracle to justify the yearly maintenance. However as per Oracle, we are free to drop the support any time we want to do so. If however we want to come back, we would have to pay maintenance/License fee retroactively. Our CIO along with Few of the other CIO's in Home building Vertical discussed this at length and this kinda forced us to stay on the supported model as JD Edward is one of our most critical business application.
Having said that, we also decided to do the upgrade from 8.10 to 9.1 to take advantage of latest and greatest offering and upgrade underlying h/w and s/w as well.

If the case has not changed ( about paying retroactively), We would like to remain current. With that my question is how often do you upgrade your Tools release, Base line ESU and updates.

In addition, based on COBIT, I think you'd fail a SOX audit unless you can prove that you are able to apply fixes to security vulnerabilities that either you or the vendor uncover. Without support, if any of those fixes are included in Tools Releases, you're in trouble with the suits.

jdeKrnl

[ QUOTE ]
However as per Oracle, we are free to drop the support any time we want to do so. If however we want to come back, we would have to pay maintenance/License fee retroactively.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have always heard this as well. If its true kind of makes breaking up with Oracle a one-time thing.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
However as per Oracle, we are free to drop the support any time we want to do so. If however we want to come back, we would have to pay maintenance/License fee retroactively.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have always heard this as well. If its true kind of makes breaking up with Oracle a one-time thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Brian,

yes and no. If you break up with Oracle, it is going to cost you big time to get back on board. For most companies, they will charge you the kiss and makeup fees mentioned above. However, if you are planning on a huge upgrade, buying more licenses, software, hardware, etc, you can use that as leverage instead. That's the route my former employer went.

Either way, it will cost a pretty penney to rejoin the club.

I also agree with jdeKrnl's comment. If you are supporting JDE for a publically traded US company, the SOX auditors will have a field day if they discover that JDE does not have a support contract.

- Gregg