UPK End of Life

In January 2018 Oracle announced the withdrawal of Support for User Productivity Kit (UPK) with no further development or major feature releases following version 12.1. However, their subsequent announcement in July 2018 to extend Premier Support for UPK to December 2022, and therefore delay end of life for UPK, has resulted in many of our clients taking a more pragmatic approach to their continued use of UPK.

If you have a valid maintenance and support contract and are running the latest version of UPK (currently version 12.1.4), you can continue to develop and deploy content using UPK, at least in the short term. Download our free UPK Guide, which offers advice to help existing UPK Developers utilise the tool to its full potential, including some suggestions for enhancing your existing content and making the most out of UPK's many features. Our recent blogs also provide guidance on how you might consider revamping your UPK content and extending the life of the UPK Knowledge Center.

When is the right time to replace UPK?
With this extended reprieve, you can continue to benefit from a tool in which you have invested your budget and time. Your search and eventual choice of replacement tool may be best planned when you have a compelling event. Such an event could be a major upgrade or change in application, indeed any change that necessitates the re-recording of a large amount of UPK content.  Your UPK content is likely to be a valuable asset; we have several options for migrating your UPK source files into editable content.   Alternatively, you may wish to invest in a new tool in between major projects, taking this window of opportunity to upskill your content authors and re-recording content as required.

What can Larmer Brown offer?
We have over 20 years UPK technical and development experience and appreciate how much the tool has to offer, and how difficult it could be to replace it within your organisation. Having undertaken extensive investigations into finding a suitable replacement for UPK, we can offer you advice on how best to manage UPK end of life and your UPK migration to an alternative tool, as well as making the most out of UPK in the interim.