Oracle's 'de-support' deadline garners little support

By Alorie Gilbert

As thousands gather this week for the OracleWorld annual conflab in San Francisco, an impending ultimatum over a key software upgrade has some IT managers fuming.

This summer, Oracle announced plans to discontinue support for version 10.7 of its business applications, giving customers the choice of paying for a costly upgrade to version 11i - or losing technical support for the older software.

After the 'de-support' date of 30 June 2003 clients using version 10.7 will not be able to call Oracle for help when they encounter problems with their systems. Nor will they have access to electronic documentation and software patches.

"We're doing the upgrade but we're not happy about it," said Don Tarkenton, CIO at Graebel Companies, a moving and storage company in the Denver area. Graebel expects to spend $2m on upgrading from Oracle 10.7 Business Applications to Oracle 11i E-Business Applications by April. "It's expensive, and we expect very little return on investment."

Oracle's suite of business applications helps companies with critical processes such as bookkeeping, human resources and inventory tracking.

Although Oracle released 11i over two years ago and notified customers of the date when technical support would be discontinued a year ago, the majority of Oracle business applications customers - 8,000 out of a total of 13,000, according to Oracle's own figures - are still running 10.7.

Software companies routinely discontinue support for old products, requiring clients to upgrade or go without support. Oracle defends its decision by noting it has supported 10.7 for seven years, far longer than most other companies support their software.

Nevertheless, Oracle's deadline has drawn criticism because of a confluence of three rare circumstances: initial problems with the new software, a weakened economy and the complexity of upgrading.

Many companies initially shunned version 11i because of reports of bugs and other implementation problems. Oracle didn't offer a reasonably stable version until late last year, say customers and others familiar with the product.

"We got pinched by Oracle not having a good product to migrate to earlier," said Steve Kirby, an Oracle database administrator at Portland, Oregon-based Oregon Steel Mills, a steel products manufacturer with more than 500 Oracle 10.7 users. Kirby doesn't expect the company to upgrade to 11i until 2004.

In addition, customers and consultants say making the 11i upgrade is a major undertaking, "a challenge akin to a re-implementation" of the entire software package, according to a report from AMR Research released in May.

Oracle maintains it has been more than fair to customers on the upgrade issue. The company has provided support for the 10.7 version for seven years and has extended the discontinue date for the product twice already, Oracle executives point out.

"There's no question the economy is a factor, and that is difficult for some customers, but we've pushed the de-support date out twice already," said Jeff Henley, Oracle CFO, during a media and analyst briefing on Monday at OracleWorld. "We're not trying to alienate customers but life moves on."

Still, by urging companies to undertake an expensive upgrade during a sour economy, Oracle may be sowing seeds of resentment among its customers. Even companies planning to upgrade by June say they are not happy about the ultimatum Oracle has given them.

"The June 30 date was seen as a sabre-rattling tactic from Oracle and we did resent that," said Graebel's Tarkenton.

Oracle is finding it increasingly difficult to provide support for release 10.7, said Cliff Godwin, senior vice president of 11i application development at Oracle. Because of employee turnover at Oracle, he said, the company has fewer people on staff skilled in the client/server technology on which 10.7 is built.

But angry customers say it would cost Oracle far less to keep trained people on staff and to continue supporting 10.7 than it costs thousands of customers to rush an upgrade.

"What Oracle is doing is looking out more for their own benefit than for the benefit of their customers," said Mike Oleson, an IT director at an aerospace manufacturing company who requested that the name of his company not be published. The company, he said, is the midst of planning its upgrade to 11i, but doesn't plan to switch on the new version until July of next year, meaning it will use the software for a brief period without technical support.

Alorie Gilbert writes for CNET News.com.