Business case to move from Oracle BPM 10.3g to BPM11g

Question

We are a very large organisation doing our business process implementation using Oracle BPM 10.3g. Currently we are working on only 3 processes, but over next couple of years, we would have at least 10 LIVE processes. As an organisation, we are wondering if we should at all move to OBPM 11g or would it be better to move as early as possible.
As I understand, the migration from 10.3g to 11g would not be migration, but re-work of all the processes. Is this correct?
Or does Oracle have plans to come out with BPM 12g that would offer migration features from 10.3g?
Are there any good reasons why a large organisation like ours would benefit by moving to BPM 11g? If yes, what are these reasons?
Are these benefits good enough to scrap 1-2 years effort and BPM knowledge earned while developing solution on BPM 10.3g as BPM 11g looks architecturally quite different from 11g?
Or should our approach be to implement all our processes on 10.3g and then move onto 11g 2-3 years from now if the benefits are not significant?
Regards,
Amit Goswami
Edited by: 874034 on 21-Jul-2011 07:23

Answer 1

Hi.
I'd like to add some comments here that might be useful.
As Mark already said, migration tools will be provided in 12 for transforming 10.3 projects. It is important to note that these tools will facilitate migration but will no accomplish a 100% automated transformation. One quick reason would be the support of BPMN (design and runtime) instead of XPDL. Some XPDL stuff may be represented in different ways in BPMN and you will have to choose which option is better for you.
So what I think is really important for any 10.3 customer is to start knowing and using the new platform. Some of the reasons would be:
- Each BPM project is different. Knowing about 11/12 will help you understand the specific situation of your project.
- Based on the above, you will be in good shape to understand migration procedures and impact as soon as documentation is ready.
- You may find that new processes you have to develop can take advantage of 11g features, so you will have the option of implementing them using the new version.
- Runtime platform may also be different. That will depend on you current environment (standalone for instance) which may be different from 11g. So it's not only about design patterns, but also runtime.
Again, BPM implementation is different, so for some customers it'd be better to wait until 12 to migrate their processes but others can start developing on 11g right now. In order to decide which is the best approach you need to know about the new platform. And Mark also mentioned one huge advantage: you can start with 11gPS4 right now knowing that the experience will help you a lot also for 12.
So my strong suggestion would be to take time to read docs, download the tool and implement some samples. You may even want to prototype some of your existing processes (or the new ones) in the tools and see how it goes.
Another tip I can suggest is to look for 10.3 guidelines to minimize migration. This doc have some suggestions for having an easier migration path in the future but most importantly provides information about how many 10.3 features are going to be 'mapped' into 12g, and I think it's going to be valuable information for you. The current version is quite outdated. Product Management intends to update it for next OOW.
Hope it helps.
Regards,
Gustavo