The benefits of running in parallel during your upgrade process

When I hear the word “parallel,” my mind immediately goes back to my 9th grade Geometry class.  I was not a particularly good geometry student and the teacher was also the coach who cut me from the basketball team. So needless to say, this is not a particularly pleasant memory for me.

When talking about upgrades, though, I have a much happier association with the word “parallel.” That’s because when using the incremental parallel upgrade process (IPUP) to upgrade your OnBase solution, you have the ability to run multiple versions of your solution in parallel from the same database.

That’s right – the same database.  There’s no need to duplicate data, documents, or configuration items like Keyword Types and Document Types.

How is this possible? It’s all because of the OnBase database – we’ve designed it from Day 1 to be able to accommodate multiple versions to run at the same time, in parallel.

Taking the parallel road to success

Think about how you got to work today – at some point, you probably used a road. Your road may be a gravel path, a red-brick boulevard or a 15-lane super highway. But regardless of the type of road you used, chances are it can accommodate almost any kind of transportation, from covered wagons and bicycles to futuristic concept cars.

An OnBase database is a lot like that road. It can accommodate virtually any OnBase version running side-by-side at the same time.  Your horse-and-buggy (metaphorically speaking) OnBase 7.2 solution can access the same documents and data as your self-driving hybrid (again, metaphorically speaking) OnBase 16 solution.

This is possible because the development of our database has always been additive – we do not remove columns or tables. This allows older versions of our software to always operate as expected, because it can always locate the information they need. Likewise, newer software is able to access those older tables and columns, as well as newer ones, to find the information it needs.

Thus empowering your employees to find the information they need, quickly and easily.

Driving down parallel roads that are never closed

Another benefit of this additive process is that we have never severed our upgrade path. You can even upgrade our earliest solutions to the forthcoming OnBase 16 release without having to start over from scratch.

Why is this important? Like all benefits of the IPUP process, it’s all about mitigating risk. You can plan your upgrade with confidence, knowing that critical systems and processes in one area of the solution will always be available as you upgrade the systems and processes in another area.

For example:

• AP clerks are still able to approve invoices and route exceptions without interruption from their OnBase 13 Unity Clients while HR recruiters view resumes in OnBase 15 from their mobile devices.
• Scheduled processes that bring documents or data into OnBase from other line-of-business applications can remain in place on older software, undisturbed, while users are upgraded to our latest version to take advantage of new features or functionality.
• Doctors and nurses at an outpatient clinic can continue to access patient records and paperless charts through the OnBase 14 web client as the hospital upgrades its solution so central billing can take advantage of the latest enhancements to the Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) solution.

Parallel software – also referred to as “mixed mode” – is intended to make your upgrade experience easier by mitigating risk. However, we do not intend for this to be a long-term option for your solution.

For more information on the IPUP, request a copy of the Mitigating Risk in OnBase Upgrades whitepaper or download a copy from the OnBase Technical Community today.

That way, your organization continues to speed down the highway, even when you’re repaving it.