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By Dan Orzech June 14, 2002 More than two years after it was officially released, and seven updates later, version 11i of Oracle's applications appears to be finally hitting its stride. First released in May 2000, Oracle's E-Business Suite version 11i was touted by the company as a comprehensive suite of Internet-enabled applications. But in its eagerness to capitalize on the Internet bandwagon, the company may have released the new products before they were fully ready. While long-established applications like Oracle Financials were stable relatively early on, newer applications like Oracle's customer relationship management (CRM) tools, or modules which were significantly re-written for version 11i, like order management, were rife with problems. "It took Oracle a lot longer to stabilize 11i than previous releases," says Marc Hebert, executive vice president of Fremont, Calif.-based systems integrator Sierra Atlantic. "The first year and a half were pretty rocky." Hesitant about upgrading to the new release, customers pressured Oracle to push out the date for ending support of the previous version, 10.7, to June 2003. Few users so far have rushed to upgrade: only 12 percent of Oracle's 12,000 applications customers are running 11i today. And even customers who successfully installed 11i have had to work hard to get to a bug-free version. "There has been a huge number of patches," says Hebert. "A lot of IT shops are frustrated with how many patches you have to apply to get to a stable version." Debugging 11i Paying Off But now, 11i seems to be coming into its own. Oracle is putting more attention on product quality, including using automated software testing tools from Mercury Interactive, of Sunnyvale, Calif. to hunt for bugs. The company is also making test suites based on Mercury Interactive's tools available to customers, so they can test their own implementations of Oracle's applications in-house.
The bug-fixing seems to be paying off: the latest version of 11i, 11.5.7, released this month, appears to be far more stable, according to systems integrators who are working with it. "11i's stability is no longer an issue," says Hebert. "We are increasingly comfortable with it." That means that a growing number of Oracle customers are now moving to the new version. "We're seeing more and more people upgrading," says Ronald Veith, a partner at Accenture who heads up that firm's Oracle consulting practice. "About 65% of our work today is with 11i, and 35% with older versions." According to Oracle, some 3,000 users are in the process of upgrading to 11i. While it may have taken Oracle a while to stabilize the product, says Veith, customers who are upgrading to 11i are finding significant business benefits in making the move. For one thing, Oracle has added functionality, freeing customers from having to write their own code. "The product has more breadth and depth to it now," Veith says. Modules like order management have been expanded, "so customers do not have to support nearly as much custom-written code." Oracle is also moving to repair relations with its customers in the wake of the problems with 11i. After a period of friction with the independent Oracle Applications User Group, during which Oracle launched its Oracle AppsWorld conference, which directly competed with user meetings sponsored by the OAUG, the company is now making efforts to work more closely with the OAUG. For example, the OAUG is now involved in selecting some of the papers presented at Oracle's user conference, according to Tom Wyatt, OAUG president. Oracle has also moved top executive Mark Barrenechea out of its engineering group and into a new position where he will focus on customer satisfaction with Oracle's applications. "Barrenechea will be working directly with customers, making sure that their upgrades are a success," says Wyatt. "It's a very positive step in the right direction." |