Oracle announced earlier this year that they will be waiving the first year fees for their e-Business Suite customers for Extended Support that were scheduled to start in 2010. While welcome news, this move is different from actually moving out the start date for Extended Support to 2011. The implications are as follows.
Extended Support is now scheduled to start in November 2010; however Oracle will waive the fees for the first year. Those customers who have not migrated to R12 by November 2011 will therefore have to pay for Extended Support starting in November 2011. Oracle will transition customers who are not on R12 to Sustaining Support starting in November 2013; if Oracle had moved out the start date for Extended Support, then Sustaining Support would not have started for customers who are not on R12 until November 2014. The question raised therefore is whether your institution will have migrated to R12 by November 2013.
Below are the different support definitions provided by Oracle (see http://www.oracle.com/support/lifetime-support-policy.html); you will see that support drops off sharply once the transition to Sustaining Support is made.
Premier Support Offers:
· Major product and technology releases
· Technical support
· Access to support portal
· Updates and fixes
· Security alerts
· Critical Patch Updates
· Tax, Legal, and Regulatory updates
· Upgrade scripts
· Certification with existing third-party products/versions
· Certification with most new third-party products/versions
· Certification with most new Oracle products
Extended Support Offers (for a fee):
· All of the above except certification with most new third-party products/versions
Sustaining Support Offers:
· Major product and technology releases
· Technical support
· Access to support portal
· Pre-existing updates and fixes
· Pre-existing security alerts
· Pre-existing upgrade scripts