There are many reasons and considerations for upgrading WebCenter content. In this blog we will review the three considerations and discuss upgrade options. When upgrading Oracle WebCenter Content it is a great opportunity to re-design or correct issues in the current environment. It will also, provide your company a more reliable and supported environment.

Consideration

• Get Current with Support and Maintenance
  • Premier and extended Support for 10g , 11g, and 12.1.x versions of WebCenter Content are all in sustaining support or best effort support. When you consider that Premier support has elapsed in 2019 or earlier for the listed versions it makes sense to go to a newer 12.2.x version of WebCenter Content.
• Content and System Consolidation
  • Some Legacy WebCenter customers come to the realization that they have too many instances of the system in place, as well as disparate/duplicate content being managed. Instead of trying to audit each one of their individual systems and fix or change any metadata issues, security groups, etc., they decide that doing an upgrade rectifies a lot of these problems, and enables them to get rid of content no longer needing management or retention.
• Growing List of Environment & Technology Dependencies
  • Perhaps your organization wants to be on the latest version of an Oracle Database or Microsoft Database, but you can’t because your legacy WebCenter system is not supported on the new version.
  • Unless you upgrade WebCenter, your organization as a whole may be impacted by not being able to utilize the newest version of associated or dependent technologies.
  • It’s possible you organization wants to remove old hardware or no longer can support older Operating Systems because they are out of support coverage. This can lead to issues because Oracle WebCenter Content is not supported on the newer versions of an operating system or is to delicate to transfer to new hardware.

Upgrade Options

• WebCenter Content In-Place Upgrades
  • When considering doing an in-place upgrade you need to ask yourself the following questions.
    • Do we need new hardware?
    • Do we have performance issues?
    • Do we need to update the metadata or content metadata model?
    • How many hops do we need to make to get to the latest version? If you are on a version older than WebCenter Content 11.1.1.9.0 then you would have to perform multiple in-place upgrades. This will add a risk into the go live weekend and other options should be considered.
    • What is the allowed down time for the application when performing the Go Live? Can all the upgrade activities be completed during the window?
  • If the answer to any of these questions is no then you might be in a position where an in-place upgrade could be a quick option to get to the next supported version.
• Migrate to New WebCenter Content 12.2.x Environment
  • In my opinion installing a new WebCenter Content environment on new hardware is the superior option when upgrading.
  • WHY:
    • You can choose to install the new WebCenter Content on premise or on a cloud platform like Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Click the link to read more about WebCenter on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
    • When migrating the content data from your old environment to the new 12c environment you can manipulate the data to correct metadata issues or correct security problems.
      • If you have not read any blogs on the Fishbowl Solutions Migration Tool, I have provided a link to explain how this can be an asset during a migration: Fishbowl Solutions Migration Tool
    • Go lives become low risk because at a high level you disable/shutdown the old environment and turn the new environment on. You then update any Company portals with the new URL information.

Fishbowl Solutions has over 25 years of experience performing WebCenter installations and upgrades. If you would like assistance, Fishbowl Solutions can review your environment and recommend options for the approach to upgrading your WebCenter Content Environment.