How Do Oracle Support Policies Affect My Ability to Upgrade to Fusion?

As I noted in my last posting, Oracle is offering a direct upgrade path from versions 8.8, 8.9, and 9.0 to Fusion. Those on earlier releases will need to make a multiple pass upgrade. Lately, Oracle has been touting a "Lifetime Support Policy", which suggests that any company that remains on support will be able to upgrade to Fusion. But is this really the case? Let's take a closer look at Oracle's support policies.

For the first 5 years after a release, Oracle will provide Premier Support.
Premier Support provides:
Access to new releases
Technical support
Updates, fixes, and security alerts
Tax, legal, and regulatory updates
Upgrade scripts
Certification with new third-party products/versions

After 5 years, a product goes into Sustaining Support.
Sustaining Support provides:
Access to new releases
Technical support
Pre-existing fixes for your solution
Customers may also obtain customer specific fixes at an additional fee

For three years after a product is no longer eligible for Premier Support, it is eligible for Extended Support. Extended support provides companies with all of the features of Premier Support except for certification with third-party products and versions. I don't have any good insight as to how much Oracle is charging for Extended Support.

For those companies that are planning to upgraded to Fusion, what is most important is that Upgrade Scripts are included in Premier Support but not in Sustaining Support. This means that unless a company is paying for Extended Support, there is no guarantee that Oracle will support that company with any issues that arise during the upgrade process. Here are the release dates for versions 8.8 and higher of CRM, Financial/Supply Chain and HRMS products. As it stand, these will no longer have Upgrade Script support 5 years from the dates shown below:

Q4 2002--CRM 8.8 and HRMS 8.8
Q4 2003--Financials/Supply Chain 8.8
Q4 2004--CRM 8.9 and HRMS 8.9
Q3 2005--Financials/Supply Chain 8.9

Now, let's look at the Fusion Roadmap. Oracle has stated publicly that the first Fusion Applications are planned for 2007 and a Fusion Application Suite is scheduled for 2008. However, they also acknowledges that the timing these plans may change. If we assume these dates to be accurate, however, this means that HRMS and CRM users on release 8.8 will have passed the Premier Support window well before a full Fusion Suite is available. For HRMS users, this is particularly critical since they cannot operate reliably without tax support. The picture isn't much brighter for Financial/Supply chain users since, based in this roadmap, they would likely only have a few months to execute an upgrade to maintain uninterrupted support.

Unless Oracle changes their support policies, it doesn't seem likely that companies on 8.8 versions will have the opportunity to wait for Fusion. In fact, 8.9 users are also at risk if the Fusion suite is delayed significantly.

My recommendation:
Companies that are currently on 8.4 and that want to be on the Fusion path should be immediately planning to upgrade to version 8.9 now or to quickly move to 9.0 when it is released and to be prepared to pay for Extended Support. Companies that are currently on 8.8 should be planning to upgrade to version 9.0 sometime in 2006 or 2007.