Oracle renewal time is right around the corner. And if you’re looking at your Oracle EBS support renewal fees and wondering, “Am I getting my money’s worth?” you’re not alone. In our global survey of Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) customers across industries and geographies, we learn IT leaders are challenging the rising costs, mounting risks and innovation gridlock tied to their EBS environments with new options.
Read on to discover the most surprising takeaways and how they could impact your EBS roadmap.
Takeaway #1: 58% of EBS customers are running on unsupported versions
More than half of the organizations we surveyed are still running EBS 12.1 or earlier, which is officially in Sustaining Support. That means no new updates, no security patches and no tax or regulatory fixes. Yet 90% of those customers say they know they’re not receiving full support but are choosing to stay, many citing the cost and complexity of upgrading.
For many organizations, these versions are stable, proven and deeply customized. An upgrade requires significant resource planning, extensive testing, potential downtime, retraining, and disruption to workflows – often with little ROI to show for it. In fact, our clients tell us the cost and complexity of an upgrade often outweigh any benefit, and over half of respondents have contemplated replacing their Oracle Support with third-party support.
When Welch’s was faced with rising vendor support costs that still did not include customizations, and upgrades that lacked value, they made a strategic decision to move to Rimini Support™ for Oracle for its Oracle EBS and Oracle Database platforms. “The support and maintenance costs were nearly 12-15 percent of our IT budget, and we were at end-of-life for the versions we were running; however, there were no new features or functions in the next version that could justify the effort and cost of upgrading,” Dave Jackson, [former] CIO of Welch’s said. With Rimini Street, Welch’s was able to immediately halve their Oracle annual maintenance fees, reinvest in marketing initiatives, and benefit from expert support that included customizations at no additional cost. They also retained the ability to upgrade to its already licensed and archived software at any time in the future. Read Welch’s client success story.
Oracle EBS Roadmap Impact: You have options. Say “no” to vendor pressure to migrate just to remain fully supported. Rimini Street enables you to remain on your current release, access comprehensive support, and reinvest upgrade resources into projects that help drive growth and enhance competitiveness.
Takeaway #2: 8 out of 10 respondents are NOT considering Fusion
Despite aggressive vendor messaging, only 15% of respondents say they’re considering a move to Fusion, Oracle’s SaaS-based application suite. Though Fusion was at the top of the list of SaaS-based ERP options that respondents were considering, other players like MS Dynamics, S/4HANA and Workday were also in the mix. Concerns around moving to SaaS ERP platforms include:
- The high cost of licensing and implementation
- Complex data migrations and integrity risks
- Business disruption and operational downtime
- Loss of control over their IT environment
Fusion may be Oracle’s preferred destination, but it may not be the right fit for most EBS customers, particularly those with highly customized environments or non-Oracle ecosystems. In fact, 60% of respondents report no immediate plans to move to any cloud-based SaaS ERP solution, suggesting a preference to optimize existing, on-prem systems as opposed to sweeping moves to SaaS.
Kenny Chang, CMO of Korean Air was also in a similar situation to Welch’s. His vision of a cloud-first strategy, including moving its highly customized ERP to the cloud, required a more efficient, proactive support model. “Moving our ERP environment to AWS was a strategic decision for us – setting the foundation for the next five to ten years. Partnering with Rimini Street wasn’t just a cost cutting move, it was about gaining the confidence and the support we need to execute our long-term vision with stability and innovation.” By choosing Rimini Street to support its Oracle EBS, Oracle Database, and Siebel platforms, Korean Air could pursue its own path to the cloud on its own schedule – becoming the first customer in the world to stabilize its ERP on the AWS Cloud and reduce its data footprint, while achieving dramatic savings that were reinvested into cybersecurity initiatives. Read the full Korean Air story.
Oracle EBS Roadmap Impact: You don’t need to move to SaaS to achieve ERP innovation. For many organizations, optimizing a stable, customized release while innovating at the edges with best-fit tools and applications can deliver more value than the cost, risk and disruption of migrating to a SaaS-based ERP platform.
Takeaway #3: 74% have already moved EBS to the cloud
Nearly three-quarters of EBS customers have moved away from traditional on-premises hosting, embracing cloud and hybrid models for scalability and cost control. At the same, we’re also seeing many clients repatriate certain workloads back on-premises because they didn’t achieve the cost predictability, enhanced system security, and control they expected. CIO.com mirrors this trend citing research from IDC stating, “…about 80% of respondents ‘expected to see some level of repatriation of compute and storage resources in the next 12 months.’”
What some are finding is that the cost of running high performance workloads on hyperscalers like AWS, GCP, and Azure or on Oracle’s OCI platform, have resulted in cost overruns and inability to customize applications the way they can in on-prem environments. Of the 25% of respondents running on-prem today, nearly half have no plans to move EBS out of their data centers.
Oracle EBS Roadmap Impact: It’s not where you run EBS, it’s who controls the roadmap. Carefully evaluate the benefits of cloud platforms to ensure that you’ll gain the cost and performance benefits that you’re expecting without getting locked into a platform that could limit your ability to innovate in the future.
Takeaway #4: 68% would reallocate freed up vendor support fees to AI initiatives
When asked where respondents would reinvest savings from moving away from Oracle’s support model, nearly 7 in 10 EBS customers said AI. With Oracle’s innovation efforts focused on cloud applications, EBS licensees are forced into risky migrations to access incremental AI capabilities. However, many licensees are choosing third-party support for the freedom to innovate around the edges and build the AI capabilities that need right now.
That’s a clear signal: organizations want to modernize, but on their terms. With Oracle’s newest AI innovations tied exclusively to OCI, many EBS customers are left out of the conversation. Meanwhile, third-party support gives organizations the breathing room to stabilize core operations while freeing up budget to invest in AI and digital transformation instead of spending budget on complex migrations that deliver little or no value.
Oracle EBS Roadmap Impact: Fuel innovation by optimizing your IT budget. With up to 50% savings on annual maintenance fees and up to 90% on total support costs, Rimini Street helps accelerate transformation with enterprise platforms like ServiceNow® to bring AI, workflow automation and single-pane-of-glass visibility in weeks – not years. And our experts can not only help you fund this project, but also provide professional services to expertly deliver it for you.
Recommendations for your EBS roadmap planning
The findings are clear: most EBS customers are staying put, not because they lack vision, but because the upgrade options don’t make sense. Oracle’s support fees typically equal 22% of the original license cost, regardless of the age of the software or how much value is being delivered. EBS 12.1 customers are paying full price for what amounts to limited, restricted support. Even customers on 12.2.14, the latest certified release, are often seeing only minor enhancements in dashboards, mobility and interoperability. No transformative innovation. No meaningful ROI. As a result, executives are putting more scrutiny on this piece of the IT budget seeking stronger ROI from their support spend. The report points to the need to optimize people, time and resources to focus on integrating emerging technologies like AI. Rimini Street has helped thousands of clients reduce costs and fund innovation by extending the life of their ERP investments.
With Rimini Street, clients gain the freedom to determine their own roadmap and upgrade or not upgrade, migrate to cloud or not migrate to cloud, based on their strategic roadmap – not vendor pressure.
