In Support we field a lot of questions about the migration of Oracle Applications to different platforms.  This article describes the techniques available for migrating an Oracle Applications environment to a new platform and discusses some of the common questions that arise during migration.  This subject has been frequently discussed in previous blog articles but there still seems to be a gap regarding the type of questions we are frequently asked in Service Requests.

Some of the questions we see are quite abstract. Customers simply want to get a grip on understanding how they approach a migration. Others want to know if a particular architecture is viable. Other customers ask about mixing different platforms within a single Oracle Applications environment.   

Just to clarify, throughout this article, the term 'platform' refers specifically to operating systems and not to the underlying hardware. For a clear definition of 'platform' in the context of Oracle Applications Support then Terri's very timely article:

• Oracle E-Business Suite Platform Smörgåsbord
  

The migration process is very similar for both 11i and R12 so this article only mentions specific differences where relevant.