Why Upgrade?
Simple question, isn’t it? Paul from Sogeti in the Netherlands did ask this via email last week. He told me that it’s difficult to convince customers who only look at an database as the backend to their application. If one is looking only from the apps perspective on the whole topic a database upgrade might be something totally useless simply costing time, effort and money.
These facts might convince one or the other customer:
#1:
Oracle support period will end soon or has ended.
As there are tons of customers still on 10.2 the have left now even the first year of free-extended support – meaning no bug fixes unless you pay 20% of your support fee on top to get extended support for critical issues for another year – I’d call this “Wake Up Call” 😉
#2:
The application provider is pushing you to uprgade.
Oracle EBS, Siebel, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, even SAP – current supported versions will require Oracle 11.2 – so you’ll have to go.
#3:
CPU or PSUs – security fixes.
The news (and I mean ALL news, not even the yellow press) is full of reports and hacked and cracked systems. It is essential to have the most current security fixes. And you’ll get them
only during the premier support period unless you pay extra for extended support.
#4:
Potential cost savings part 1.
What is the current cost driver in modern data centers? Fast disks taking tons of energy especially for cooling. 11.2 offers advanced compression and everybody can try this out with the free compression advisor beforehand. If I get acces to a customers system showing them that we could save half of the disk space this matters and pays back quite quickly if you consider energy costs and the cost for new storages.
#5:
Potential cost savings part 2.
Active Data Guard. Utilize your standby for reports, offload reader traffic such as Apple does with iTunes platform. And amazon.com does as well. You’ll avoid new hardware for a longer time, you’ll give end users a better experience as you decrease the traffic and spread
it. But this will make only sense if you have a standby.
#6:
Faster access to LOB data – move to Secure Files.
Doesn’t cost anything extra, is available in SE, EE etc. And will give your end-users much
faster access to CLOB/BLOB data in the database.
