Top 5 Reasons to Upgrade to 11.1.2.3

With the release of new third party software and new features in the latest EPM version, we have been receiving questions from clients on why should they consider upgrading to the latest version of Oracle EPM which is 11.1.2.3

First of all, you may have heard from Oracle that the latest patch set update for Oracle EPM is due out in Q1 of this year which will be 11.1.2.3.500. It is said that this patch will introduce the long awaited support for IE10 among other things and perhaps support for Windows 2012.

Mostly from a technical perspective the top 5 reasons to upgrade are:

Reason 1: Support for IE10 and Windows 8.x

In the last few months, I have seen many IT departments starting to upgrade all client desktops to Windows 7 (sometimes Windows 8), IE10 and Office 2013. Although support for IE10 and Windows 8.x is still yet to be released, Oracle has mentioned in several places that the upcoming 11.1.2.3.500 patch will introduce this support. When? It’s anybody’s guess but they said they expect to release it by Q1 2014. With IE10 and Windows 8.x support comes support for FireFox 24 as well.  And could this also mean support for Windows 2012? We will just have to wait and see.

Reason 2: Support for Office 2013

The good news is that if you want to support Office 2013 you don’t have to upgrade your entire EPM environment, you only need to upgrade Smart View. The latest Smart View version is 11.1.2.5 and this is the version that supports all 11.1.2.x versions (11.1.2.1, 11.1.2.2 and 11.1.2.3). So if your IT department is upgrading all desktops to Office 2013, you want to include Smart View 11.1.2.5 as part of this upgrade. Again, this does not require you upgrade your EPM server environment, just the desktops.

Reason 3: Transform your legacy FDQM and ERPi apps to FDMEE

Probably one of the biggest reasons to upgrade for clients that use FDQM or ERPi is the ability to upgrade to FDMEE. Or maybe you use some archaic method for loading data into your planning applications (report scripts via batch scripts, etc.) you may still want to upgrade to take advantage of the new features introduced in FDMEE. If you want to read about FDMEE and integration with other new modules you can read Francisco's blog which has a wealth of information on this matter at http://akafdmee.blogspot.com

Reason 4: Introduce new modules

Starting with 11.1.2.2 and now with 11.1.2.3, Oracle has been introducing new modules like Account Reconciliation Manager that integrates with FDMEE. Other new modules include Project Based Planning and Tax provisioning. See below for a link to a complete list of new modules and features in EPM 11.1.2.3

Reason 5: Introduce new features on existing applications

EPM 11.1.2.3 introduced a lot of new features from Planning’s ability to use ASO cubes and HFM unlimited dimensionality to a myriad of enhancements to the LCM that allows for a much easier maintenance and migration of application artifacts between environments (and presumably versions). Other features like Smart View’s ability to update metadata, can be a little scarier but these need to be weighed and depending on your needs they will make a strong argument for upgrading to 11.1.2.3

For a complete list of features introduced in EPM 11.1.2.3 you can read the documents included in the following URL: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E40248_01/index.htm