PROACTIVE HOWTO Smart patching strategy

Created this thread to provide a patching strategy

Everybody is welcome to input new advises.

Why bother patching?

Because it's cheaper and safer in the long run.  I'm always surprised by customers who pay more attention to maintaining their car than a mission-critical enterprise resource planning system.

The E-Business Suite is a large, complex system.  The further you fall behind in maintaining your system:

    The more work it requires to isolate and resolve issues.
    The greater the likelihood of encountering an avoidable known issue.
    The greater the risk of upgrading from an untested configuration to a new version.
    The greater the effort required to upgrade to new versions.