[Dec 16, 2009 Update: Windows 7 is now certified with the E-Business Suite; see this article] This is the second of a series of regular updates on our Windows 7 certification projects for the E-Business Suite.
Microsoft Windows 7 was officially released today. Here’s a recap of our plans for certifying the Oracle E-Business Suite with Microsoft’s latest operating system. As always, the answers to these questions may change as we move through the certification cycle. You’re welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog for later updates.
Our Progress on Windows 7 We’re certifying Windows 7 with the E-Business Suite right now. We’ve already tested several of the Win7 betas and release candidates, and those tests have gone very smoothly. At this point, E-Business Suite product teams need to complete their certification tests with Windows 7 desktop clients. Once those tests are completed, we’ll release our certification. For the
usual reasons that regular readers could have predicted, I can’t share any specific 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?
1. 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
2. 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
3. Will Oracle JInitiator Be Certified for EBS on Windows 7? No. Oracle JInitiator is no longer supported for E-Business Suite customers. Oracle JInitiator 1.1.8 was desupported in December 2008, and Oracle JInitiator 1.3 was desupported for EBS customers in July 2009. For more information about JInitiator desupport and switching your EBS end-users from JInitiator to the Sun JRE, see:
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.
4. 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.
5. What About Windows 7E? Microsoft has changed its plans for Windows 7E since I published our first interim update on this certification. At present, it appears that Microsoft has no plans to release a special version of Windows 7 for Europe. Debate around default browser selection screens for Europe continues, so we’ll continue to monitor this. If Microsoft’s plans change, and a European variant is released, our current plans are to certify the generic edition of Windows 7 with the E-Business Suite and the browsers listed above.
6. 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 have heard of a few customers with plans to deploy widespread Win7 upgrades across the enterprise, but these customers seem to be in the minority so far. 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.
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