[Oct 22, 2009: A more-recent update on our Windows 7 certification is published here.]
Microsoft Windows 7 has been getting a lot of headlines recently. This seems to have triggered an small but noticeable increase in questions about our plans for
certifying this operating system for E-Business Suite desktop clients.
We’re working with pre-release versions of Windows 7 right now. For the usual reasons that regular readers could have predicted, I can’t share any certification
schedules or date estimates here. I can provide an interim update on the following Win7 questions:
Which EBS releases will be certified with Windows 7?
Which browsers will be certified?
Will Oracle JInitiator Be certified for EBS on Windows 7?
Which Windows 7 editions will be certified?
What about Windows 7E?
What about Windows XP Mode?
This is the first of what I expect will be multiple updates on our Windows 7 certification process. You’re welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog for later updates. As always, the answers to these questions may change as we move through
the certification cycle.
Which EBS Releases Will Be Certified with Windows 7?
We plan on certifying the following Oracle E-Business Suite release with Windows 7:
EBS 11i version 11.5.10.2
EBS 12.0.4 and and higher
Which Browsers Will Be Certified?
We plan on certifying the following browsers with the E-Business Suite on Windows 7:
Internet Explorer 8
Firefox 3.5
Will Oracle JInitiator Be Certified for EBS on Windows 7?
No. We plan to certify only the native Sun Java Runtime Engine (JRE) with Windows 7. We have no plans to certify Oracle JInitiator with Windows 7.
Oracle JInitiator 1.1.8 was desupported in December 2008, and Oracle JInitiator 1.3 will be desupported for EBS customers at the end of July 2009. For more information about JInitiator desupport and switching your EBS end-users from JInitiator to the
Sun JRE, see:
Which Windows 7 Editions Will Be Certified?
We plan to test E-Business Suite compatibility against Windows 7 Professional Edition with the E-Business Suite. We fully expect that other Win7 editions will work, but we have no current plans to explicitly test the Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium,
Ultimate, or Enterprise Editions with the E-Business Suite.
What About Windows 7E?
I’ve been following the latest developments on the awkwardly-named “E editions of Windows 7” with some interest. Microsoft’s current documentation on these E editions of Windows 7
is notably scant, but confirms that certain versions of Windows 7 released in the European Economic Area, Croatia, and Switzerland will not include Internet Explorer.
Our current plans are to certify the “non E” edition of Windows 7 with the E-Business Suite with the browsers listed above. We’re currently assuming that that will be functionally-equivalent to doing a custom (clean) installation of the E
editions of Windows 7 and then subsequently installing IE or Firefox.
If this turns out not to be true, we’ll revise our certification plans accordingly. In this scenario, it would be reasonable to expect that the certification of E editions of Windows 7 will lag behind the certification of the standard Windows 7
release.
What About Windows XP Mode?
Microsoft indicates that end-users will be able to run Windows XP in a virtualized environment running via Windows Virtual PC on a Win7 desktop client. This will presumably be functionally-equivalent to running Windows XP natively.
We have no plans to conduct separate EBS certification efforts for WinXP+Virtual PC images running on Win7 clients.
What Are Your Organization’s Plans for Windows 7?
Anecdotal reports from some EBS customers seem to suggest that your plans for Windows 7 will parallel that of Windows Vista: namely, that new PCs that arrive with Windows 7 will either stay that way or will be downgraded to WinXP for the short
term. I haven’t yet heard of any customers with plans to deploy widespread upgrades across the enterprise.
I’d be very interested in hearing your plans for rolling out Windows 7 in your organization. Feel free to post a comment here or drop me an email with more details about your deployment plans.
Related Articles
- Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Certified with Apps 11i and 12
- Interim Update #3: Using IE8 with E-Business Suite
- Roundup: Oracle JInitiator 1.3 Desupported for EBS Customers in July 2009
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