JD Edwards 32-Bit Support Is Changing. Are You Ready for 64-Bit?

Is your JD Edwards environment still relying on 32 bit components? And if Oracle is moving 32 bit JD to sustain support, was that actually mean for your updates, your compliance and your long term roadmap?

Today, Frank Jordan from ERP Swiss joins us to explain the difference between 32 bit and 64 bit GDE, and what risk customers need to watch and even what options they have. By the end, they'll know exactly what questions to ask before this becomes a year end update, payroll or support emergency.

Welcome back to not your grandpa's JD Edwards. I'm your host Nate Bushfield, and today we're talking about 32 bit JD Edwards moving to sustaining support, what that means, why it matters and why customers should do it before it turns into a bigger support compliance or even an update issue.

But joining me today is Frank Jordan from ERP Swissa breakdown in plain English and help JD customers think through the move to 64 bit. Frank, how are you doing today?

Reoccurring guests now, yeah, not too bad.

But for the people out there that maybe haven't seen you on the show before, could you give us a little bit of background?

Sure. I'm a director at Earpiece Suites, uh, been working with the, uh, 1 world slash enterprise 1 product since 1996. So come on when it was first starting out, I guess I am one of your grandpa's of JDE, so to speak.

The before that I was business, another business partner also during the years worked with JD Edwards Oracle, like from 2,000 to 2,012 as a consultant CNC, but even go back to my old days, roots of mainframes as for hundreds and PCs back, well, I won't age myself too much, but it was back mutes.

So, yeah, remember the last time you're on, we got into a conversation about floppy disk, which is something that I've only seen, I've utilized a few times when I was young, but haven't really couldn't say that I've actually utilized them to the full extent.

I mean, my growing up was USB drives. That was like the main thing that we utilized in my youth. Um, so a little bit of difference here, but because you've been around JD Edwards for so long, you have really seen everything change.

And speaking of changes when customers are hearing about the 32 bit versus 64 bit, what is actually changing for them?

Well, Oracle or the vendor again, the other, a lot of the other vendors, idea, Microsoft, etc. They, they have some similar type. It varies, but Oracles has three types of stages or life cycle of, of the products.

So the other premier support, that's where they guarantee, you know, usually that's a five year window. I'm not sure you're into what they call Continuous Delivery, which is what the JD Edwards application is.

As if, oh, the continuous delivery model that guarantee that out to air as far as the product out to a ten year window. So right now, this is going out to 2036, 2037. The Oracle has committed the product. It's not going anywhere, but that the enterprise one Jodie Evere's product. They will continue developing it and hand center and so forth at a minimum until 2036, 2037.

And then years later, again at the blueprint event in April and may request event. They'll announce out on my local support that, that's, you know, another year. And, and they've been doing that war again. It came out my Duck 2 came out in 2015, but here we are at 11+ years.

Yeah, it's, it's different with the continuous delivery where and they're not redoing the product, just saying, hey, we got a new application release. They just continuously enhance the product there.

So the Premier support, a number of Oracle products is that five year window. Then they also have the Cullen extended support, and usually that's a range of maybe three years most of the time and began for a fee. You're getting that, and then you have what's called sustaining.

So sustaining means Oracle is no longer creating new pitch, new patches like security updates, new features, functionality, bug fixes itself. You can still download existing fixes that came off forth and so forth, but there's no new active development against that is summer, like the web logic, you know, that's a different technology kind of creep and Oracle, but the database and so forth they have those, and they have some nuances with the called long term support as well.

And, and in some ways, that's a little more I can to the consumers deliberate, but, yeah, that's a longer window to a certain level. So, like, on the logic long term support is 12, two men four for that. Well, it's called G, oopsie, excuse me, but this one go in there, and it's a little bit above that five year. So they select something where customer can, kind of, stay at that a bit. But again, it still eventually will catch up to you. But you you, you're playing your horizon that way.

The systems will still run, um, same deal, but what will happen is the world around the business is, is changing. You know, browsers get updated, like he said, artificial intelligent agents interfaces, the shifts of how integrations work over the years.

Sometimes we have flat files posters that our business services are XML interoperability, XML gochleans, oftens move into risk type calls, rest APIs with Jayson, etc. So you, you've got, you know, technology continue to change or evolve.

You know, when you're on these older releases like that, it can become a challenge to be able to take advantage of it or, you know, be maybe as technically nimble or you're developing quite a bit on the old methods and then the vendor says, room may not be, yeah, we may not maintain that product. So we are then we have migrations to conserve.

So if, yeah, what it leads you to is once you get us the same support, you're not like your tools you're not making that more fun.

The quick example is if you were on sustaining support and your, let's say you're on Windows 2012, that's out of the support window. So if there was a big security issue or security patch or packs, you wouldn't be able to really get in any for it. So we'd have to update multiple elements of your infrastructure in order to say, look at our numbers 20, 22, or 1, 1, 5, etc.

That's interesting that you bring up security so much. Would you say that that is the biggest compliance risk if they wait too long to switch? Or are there maybe other either even operational or compliance risk that they should be on the lookout for if they're waiting too long to make this switch?

So if a customer is still on 32 bit or even older tools, what options do they actually have to go from here time?

So that's what I was, what I let into a little bit is that, you know, you plan a move up to supported 64 bit tools and you're updating your application a lot of times for most customers that want to do that, again, the 64 bit is a, yeah, it's a little more work to do that 32 to 64 bit and just a straight tools.

But usually it's in encompass would rent it like a technology refresher, technology upgrade. So if you've been city parked at 19, 5, 6, a lot of your infrastructure is already either out of support or getting close to being out of support at your Windows or your Linux on database levels, etc.

So we, we packed this up and a lot of times we'll also recommend go ahead and get the application updates so that hopefully this is not just a technology project. It can be yard where you're just doing a like for, like you bring it up, you're just going to 64 bit work compliance and, you know, getting into the supported configurations and so fair, you also have the options of, you know, maybe doing some business transformation.

We're just taking advantage of some new features where you have a smarter scope, so you get a little more business value out of that as well. And that would sound a little bit like marching.

But, you know, the main thing they have it last year's blueprint which I thought was actually very tiny, but me and said, you do these upgrades, are you still gonna run your JD ever system, like it's 2005. We talked about that, or do you want to go in and take advantage of some of the new features functionality tools, you know, run it like it's 2025.

So some still choose to do just the basic like for, like, but if you can at least have a phase or a subsequent phase where you start implementing some of the newer pieces there.

But like I said, another quick stop gap measure for some customers if they are on the first bruise release, getting again with these tech details that supported the Deployment Server at 64, that was tools 94. The 93 was the first up app support, but the Deployment Server really wasn't there at that point.

So in Tools 9.2. 4, you could do that. So as a quick work around, you could update gesture Deployment Server the 64, but and still continue to take the issues when they make that change in the Q4 of this year 2026.

Again in the background, JB Edwards still has, it has the 32 bit code and artifacts still. They store both 32 bit and the 64 bit. You'll run 64 bit, but you could still have your own W with the color, the own W object to record could still be 32 bit C code.

So what it's doing is it has a conversion there of the 64 bet as well in your literally running 64 bet. But your source code could still be 32 bet, which will have those are again, I got a little influence there, but for this, this would allow you at least to do that again, the writings on the wall, the bottom line is that more and more of the 32 bit, the 64 bit ESU install.

We'll also go by the web side, you know, down the road and yellow be venery web web only. So, you know, that, that's just the general directions that orca talks about, but it, yeah, it first came to shove in a rough.

I want to wait till Q4, but again, if you really couldn't do your tools refresh and upgrade, you could consider the punks. Or if you're at a White tools, or you could also, yeah, if you were say, like, tools 9 2, 9 2 2 or something of that nature, you could potentially, you know, update it to 95.6. 32 or, well, 32 bet, but still have to take the deployment server to 64 volt.

Again, these are some conversations though. If we do that, those are, kind of combos that are commonly done. So, you know, so, yeah, and those are those temporary work around.

Yeah, two temporary talking maybe 12, 24 months. Why exactly, exactly? So what, like, what is the true difference there between one of those temporary work rounds and then just doing the true 64 bit migration? Like, it seems like one will buy you time and one will set you up for the future exactly.

Yep, yep, so let's use the customer, the parks himself at 9. 2. 5. 6, so we're at 32 bit there. We actually had some that went to 95. X, and they went 64 bit, so at least their transition up to a later to us was easier.

Um, but again, it's, it's not, yeah, this has been around for well over five years now. So the process of doing the 64 my that migration is pretty well known.

Said it adds a little bit of time, but from a compatibility and so forth, it's just easier to do that. There is the outside of this as well done. So we have some customers that updated their tools to 95.6, but they didn't update their application. So they, they might be sitting back at update 2 of application was lined up 2.

Well, they didn't do the code, the application code with the 64 bit changes until update 3, update 4, and the other subsequent ones that came along a little bit later there with bug fixes and, and so forth enhance new functionality, etc, etc.

So, you know, it almost behaves you just to say, I'm gonna do the app update, and I will do the tools, and so you get a better bang for the buck. You're gonna be testing anyways, because the 64 bit migration, yeah, a lot of tender skills, you may not have to test quite as much.

But with the 64 bit migration because you are having, um, hundreds of objects of sea objects that get updated you pretty well, it got to be more extensive application testing, so you might as well just take that opportunity and get yourself.

So your position, your system, like I said that take advantage of me features functionality that's available to you there.

Um yeah, on top of that, yeah, as far as the temporary deployment circuit, like I said, if I have my first choice, my first recommendation, not gonna recommend that again, that's sounds more of a last result.

It's definitely not long, nothing, but, you know, again, if you're at the end, you're right at the point where it's your end and you're really need something there. Yeah, this is a way to maybe get your, you know, across the urine that you're still gonna have to move, that'll get pushed into back.

So the, the big thing about this is if you're, if you're in these situations, you really have to work with a partner, talk to Oracle or gone through, like, flowing JDE.

You do need to try to develop some funeral, go back and have a strategy what you would like to do. He said, you you're, you better simply have agreed, uh, what we call you application technical, got you gotten to the point where you haven't taken the updates.

You, you pay to work all the support dollars all these years. And they'll get, get the value of what you've been paying for. To me, that's, it's like saying, well, I love Word 2000.

Yeah okay, word 2000, that's really nice by the 25 years old. Um, that actually was 60 bit back then, the 30 is 32 bit, and they also have the 64 bit burger.

So, but again we were still running into compatibility issues. We may not have had the formats, some of the things I've saved in the file, the app and so forth.

So there's feature functionality mode in that example where the newer versions will help even newer releases, but you're not going to get any support so easy.

So you're saying that I should be on the lookout for 128 bit coming soon.

Yeah, when you say that, so as 100 actually, yeah, or might be am when they released out the 90s, it is one of the few hundred and twenty eight bit operating systems. So RBM was already looking way out there.

Um you know, so that memory address some. They ran into that stuff in the 70s and the 80s, believe in the 60s, but, you know, the memory footprints again, the 32 bit, yeah, the largest application memory space very deeply addresses 4 gig. Application wise, it can be generally about any of the operating system about 2 gig.

So that becomes a limitation again with the amount of data and some of the things, you know, we have a number of applications like a J, yeah, where's the MRP if you're doing a full region, and you're going across all your items and so forth, yeah, or to come up with that that could, that could hit that two gig limit.

Yeah, so again, there's ways around that. Some people will split it all out, give versions to keep it lower invoicings, another area pricing. So there's a number of areas that, where the application needs, where I'm roaring 32 bet. There's, it's not a huge number, but by having that 64 bet, it does help you get with a performance as well, because you got a larger member space to operate within go.

You do, you do see, you know, with the Windows and Linux platforms as far as 64 bit itself, one of the spouse of the benefit there, but you are less, you're using more bits, but you actually do gains in their efficiency is because it's not the offering systems not running in 30 two det mode to accommodate it.

The only one we don't see a large net change difference is the AS400 because it's 128.

So literally it is, it's doing whether it's 32 or 64 bit, it's still translating some of the address space in order to slice it down. In this case, it's slicing it down the lower bit size.

Using the Migration as a Modernization Opportunity

Choosing the Right Partner and Final Recommendations