Alika
We operate branches in Belgium, Germany, Singapore, UK, Oman, HongKong and
the US and have gone with the centralised model. All our overseas users
connect via Citrix to our OneWorld installation in NZ. The cost of having a
WAN connection for everybody is not cheap, however if you were to compare it
with the infrastructure costs of having more than one OneWorld installation
(hardware, operating staff etc) I suspect it compares quite favourably.
There are no "consolidation" requirements for company reporting as
everything is in one database. All stock levels throughout the world are
visible to all our sales people in real time. In New Zealand, we have not
had to increase our IT staffing levels to cope. We have had to make sure
that we are capable of operating 24*7 with the database and application
server clustered along with a remote disaster recovery site. (Even if the
overseas offices were not connecting we would have needed to have gone with
this setup).
It would be possible to do this a lot cheaper than we are doing it by using
html clients and internet access, however our limited experience with this
was that it was not stable enough to satisfy our users.
I would have to say that we are generally satisfied with our configuration.
Regards
Marty Fleming
Business Analyst
Richmond Limited
Phone: +64 +6 8786464 Ext 8168
Fax : +64 +6 8780959
Email: mailto:
[email protected]
OneWorld: Xe SP16.1
Database: Oracle 8i
Enterprise Server: Compaq Proliant 8500R W2K