In my previous post, I covered a model that outlined multiple approaches to plan your 10g migration project. Along with choosing a rollout approach, you will need to sell that approach through your internal project approval and financial processes.
Oracle introduced a major change in architecture with 11g including a strong focus on integration with SOA and a renewed business focus with an improved Process Composer and features like Adaptive Case Management. While these introduce a cost for migration, there are many benefits that can be called out to justify the project.
Here are 4 ways you can justify the migration within your organization:
- Focus on new Business Features and Benefits – Your business can take advantage of new business focused features with the new toolset
- Example Justifications: clearer requirements via shared modeling tools; Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) in 12c is powerful and tightly integrated with the platform; Process Composer is new and enables analysts to directly model, demo and execute processes in a web-based interface – this saves time and rework
- Exploit the SOA infrastructure – Your business can take advantage of the integration platform provided as part of the Oracle SOA Suite
- Example Justifications: Use and exploit the SOA-focus in the 11g/12c Oracle product as part of a broader SOA initiative in your company; leverage adapters and BPEL to isolate and better manage your integrations to reduce support costs; open standards reduce training time and future-proof the investment
- Look at a Broader Re-Engineering – You may have older processes or came from a pre-10g BEA or Fuego product and have an existing need to refresh your systems
- Example Justifications: Other systems in your company may have moved forward and new integrations would provide more automation or benefits to the business; proposing a broader re-engineering project with more business benefits alongside technical benefits
- Focus on Refreshing Technology – Support for the BPM software will get more expensive over time as resources become scarcer and updates less frequent
- Example Justifications: IT investment is needed to update and maintain software to current standards; enhancements to the 10g product are not happening, so growing and expanding your processes may be harder; support and maintenance costs are rising and can be controlled through new technologies
For each of the above items, you may need to estimate costs and benefits for your specifics projects and your organization. I recommend a strong partnership with IT and the Business in this exercise. Both have valuable benefits to help justify migrations. AVIO can also assist in ROI calculations and justification scenarios — just contact us for more information.
Bonus Tip: Run a pilot!
- Pick a highly visible use case, but one that can be completed by a new team or with a partner like AVIO.
- Test out new features like process composer, case management and BAM
- Use integrations and show value of adapters in SOA, business rules, etc
- Get some metrics and knowledge on what it takes to migrate your processes
- Get your developers training
- Build excitement — create a story that can be told within your company!