GRC 5.2 or GRC 5.3

[Former Member]

Hi Guys,

At the moment, we are at the very beganning of our GRC project and would like to consider which version of GRC we should use.

I have read the release note from SAP for both 5.2 and 5.3, but would like to from the GRC community what their experience are, between 5.2 and 5.3 (pro and cons). I know that 5.3 is at its ramp-up phase (and will be officially available to other customers in Oct/Nov) and I would appreciate if someone could share their experience if they are involved in the ramp-up and also has the 5.2 experience (as comparison).

Thanks.

Raymond

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Raymond,

Undoubtedly 5.3 version is full of features which were not available in 5.2 and much more flexible with respect to legacy system integration. One of the biggest advantage of 5.3 over 5.2 is that now you can handle provisioning to Enterprise portal as well as on peoplesoft and other systems. There are many such advantages of 5.3 but the list is not ready with me at the moment.

As you are aware that 5.3 will be available in Oct/Nov till that time you can go for 5.2 and later on upgrade to 5.3 and the best part is you can get free upgrade to 5.3 if you are an existing 5.2 customer. So there should be no problem.

(Please donot take it as any official statement, to confirm the above information please contact SAP Support)

Let me know if you are just looking for a full list of 5.3 advantages over 5.2?

Best Regards,

Amol Bharti

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Raymond,

If you have the liberty of time and man days efforts with you to go in for a upgrade from 5.2 to 5.3, when the latter is released, I would suggest you to go from 5.2 to 5.3 in this case.

However if there is a constraint for the same because of the efforts in upgrade and the time again spent to make it fuctional, i would suggest you wait for the 5.3 to be there and then go ahead with a direct implementation for 5.3.

From my experience I have observed there are lot many features that 5.2 needs as enhancement, which are too critical for a production scenerio too. And these all, plus some of the functionality which had to be there in 5.2 but not working properly would be addressed by 5.3. Thus 5.3 would be the goal for now. It's for you or your management to decide if they are ok with going from 5.2 to 5.3 or waiting for sometime and directly moving to 5.3. The upgrade comes as a free software but there may be cost constraints due to the man-efforts involved etc., which you need to think before making this move.

Regards,

Hersh.

[Former Member]

Thanks alot for teh help Frank and all others above.

Finger cross with the GRC5.2 SP9 implementation in the next coming weeks.

Thanks !!

Raymond

[Former Member]

Thanks for the info and advices guys !!

Yep, I've read all the release notes of 5.3 and has adddress the upgrade 5.3 has to offer to the management. From the release notes, it can be seen that 5.3 is clearly more advance and has less open issues as compare to 5.2 (correct me if I'm wrong).

I do know that 5.3 is on ramp-up phase (Aug) and only available to customers during Oct/Nov (to be confirm by SAP). I'm checking with SAP now to see if we do opt for 5.3, can we be part of the ramp-up.

If there are any experts out there who has used 5.2 and is at this moment working with 5.3, I would love to hear your comments or feedback on those products.

Thanks.

Raymond

[koehntopp]

Looking at the schedule, I'd say start with 5.2 and prepare an upgrade step to 5.3 in October.

The upgrade - sticking with the features you have implemented until then - should not take much more effort than implementing a support pack, which would happen in the same time frame anyway.

Frank.

[Former Member]

Hi Frank,

We will proceed with GRC5.2 as you have recommend. Which SP should we look into when we install GRC5.2?

Thanks.

Raymond

[koehntopp]

Hi Raymond,

current SP Level is 09 for the Java components (you only need to deploy the latest SP, not the previous ones), VIRSANH is at SP10 (you need the base package plus all support packs), VIRSAHR ditto with SP08.

Frank.