Many Oracle customers inaccurately told that Oracle EBS is end-of-life and that they must move to the cloud now.

Is this something you’ve been told about your Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) system?  If so, you may want to read the latest Gartner report that goes on to say:

Despite statements and rumors to the contrary, Oracle’s on-premises suites are not at the end-of-life stage.

In fact, Oracle receives the majority of its software license revenue from customers paying for maintenance of, and new sales of, its on-premises products. The percentage of its software license revenue from on-premises products was 68% in 2016 and is now 65% — a number that remained relatively unchanged from Oracle’s fiscal 1Q18 to 2Q18.

Oracle are committed to supporting Oracle EBS through to 2030 and have delivered much new functionality in recent releases, such as online patching to minimize downtime, embedding Endeca into search, UI improvements and other value-add structural enhancements.

“EBS should be a perfectly viable product for at least the next seven to 10 years. For customers that have EBS and are happy with it, there is no need to rush to replacement.”

Gartner say you should look carefully at your options:

• Compare your business requirements to the maturity and functional depth of Oracle Cloud Applications and to Oracle’s roadmaps for them. Don’t assume that a “cloud first” sourcing policy eliminates the need for a business justification for business applications.
• Avoid confusing the sourcing of new technology with the fulfilment of business requirements. A full “rip and replace” of your current applications may not be your best option.
• Evaluate Oracle application investments in the context of a postmodern ERP strategy focused on delivering business value. Compare Oracle’s cloud applications with those of other vendors to gain a balanced perspective.

Oracle Cloud Applications have differing levels of maturity and you won’t find equivalent breadth and depth of functionality to your on-premise applications.  The report suggests you proceed with caution, because some industries aren’t yet covered by a roadmap. You may need to keep some of your current EBS and JD Edwards deployments for some time, so perhaps consider managed services or running your on-premises products in infrastructure as a service.

Gartner instead advises you to take a postmodern approach. Organizations generally aren’t looking to replace their current Oracle EBS… instead, investments in new capabilities and systems will tend to be SaaS-based and phased in over time.

Applaud’s SaaS-based integration modernizes Oracle EBS and delivers the benefits of cloud applications, such as modern features, user experience, mobile capability, and AI and chatbots, without the disruption of a rip/replace.

If you’d like to find out more about Applaud and how we can help you, please get in touch with our team.

Keep up to date with the latest from Applaud in our news section and see what thought-leading outlets have to say about us on our press page.