Upgrading to 11.0.13/11.1.1

[rockanalytics]

Hi - Currently we have Cognos 11.0.5. We are planning to upgrade and checking to see which one to choose i.e. 11.0.13 or 11.1.1
Content store - Oracle
Data source - Oracle

As per my research, found that it's mandatory to upgrade data when upgrading to 11.1. IBM states that 11.1 requires this step basically to support optimized user experience in dashboards, explorations and improve query performance. We don't do any new report development(report studio) and we just maintain the existing reports. However, most of our production support folks use query studio to build customs reports off of the data model. Need some help in making the decision i.e. to upgrade 11.0.13 that way we don't have go through the extra process of upgrading all our schema data or is there a way to bypass the data upgrade if upgrading to 11.1.1?

Thanks in advance!

[dougp]

Cognos Analytics 11.0.13 is IBM's LTS (Long Term Support) release.

Cognos Analytics 11.1.1 is the first on-prem release for the 11.1.x series.

Historically, trying to use the first few releases of major software from a big software vendor (IBM, Microsoft, etc.) in a production environment is a disaster.  I think upgrading from 10.2.1 to 11.0.4 (released 11 months after the "production" release of 11.0) was my worst IT mistake yet.  I'm still suffering with R7 (released 21 months after the "production" release of 11.0).

While 11.1.1 has many shiny objects, who knows what real problems in core functionality are lurking just below the surface.  I'd wait several releases before upgrading to 11.1.x.

I have been testing 11.0.13 and it looks good so far.  Complete your testing, then upgrade to 11.0.13 in production.  Install 11.1.x in a sandbox where your admin(s) can [use non-production or per-user licenses to] test feature behavior and upgrade processes for a while before making such a big leap.