A9.4 A9.4 World Software - what's Next?

[slandess]

All -

Background:

I work in a very large JDE World A9.4 shop running on IBM i 7.3.

We are current with JDE World A9.4 software and pay for annual software support to Oracle, which is a significant amount of money given that we really only really need annual 1099 updates for our software for tax reporting.

We rarely if ever call the JDE support line to report bugs (especially minor ones) because everyone knows that's a joke.

The company got caught in a jam a few years back because they had dropped Oracle support for the World software (version A8.1) which was then running on an iSeries with V5R4.

When OS/400 V5R4 hit end of life they had to upgrade to new IBM i Power hardware in order to upgrade the IBM i OS to version 7.3, leading to the inevitable issue of needing new media for the JDE objects from Oracle to continue using the JDE software on the new machine, since the Oracle-supplied objects running on V5R4 could not be migrated (re-encapsulated during restore) to run on the new OS.

After being off support for 10 years, the company was required to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to Oracle and get back on Oracle JDE support in order to get the new media, and continue to pay Oracle for support since that time.

Current dilemma:

As you probably already know, Oracle has set a date for end of support for JDE World 9.4.

"Premier" Support reached end-of-life in April 2022.
"Extended" Support ends in April 2025, so it appears that we'll continue to get 1099 updates until then.
"Sustaining" Support is indicated as indefinite.

However, noted below is the Oracle statement on "Sustaining" support:

Sustaining Support

Sustaining Support puts you in control of your upgrade strategy. When Premier Support expires, if you choose not to purchase Extended Support, or when Extended Support expires, Sustaining Support will be available for as long as you license your Oracle products. With Sustaining Support, you receive technical support, including access to our online support tools, knowledgebases, and technical support experts. You benefit from

- Major product and technology releases
- Technical support
- Access to My Oracle Support
- Fixes, updates, and critical patch updates created during Premier Support and Extended Support (if offered and only after the Extended Support period ends)
- Upgrade scripts created during the Premier Support stage

Sustaining Support does not include

- New updates, fixes, security alerts, data fixes, and critical patch updates
- New tax, legal, and regulatory updates
- New upgrade scripts  Certification with new third-party products/versions  Certification with new Oracle products

For more specifics on Premier Support, Extended Support, and Sustaining Support, please refer to Oracle’s “Technical Support Policies.”

What happens next...

Because we are reaching end-of-life on World, our Oracle business partner has been urging us to consider migration to E1, but there are many issues we must consider.

We are a property management company with:
- External property management systems (Yardi and MRI) which feed data into JDE
- External payroll system
- JDE GL/AP/AR systems
- JDE Property Management system
- JDE Fixed Assets system
- Hundreds of JDE World customizations
- Many Custom-written programs on the IBM i system which interface with JDE
- Custom-written Tax system which interfaces with JDE GL
- High-volume importation of journal entries via CSV files from external systems
- High-volume importation of payables (both regular and manual) via CSV files into JDE from external systems (Workspace)
- Import of Payroll data into JDE general ledger
- Hundreds of FASTR's, many of which create journal entries
- Hundreds of World Writer reports

I'm trying to get a handle on the amount of time that will be needed to get all of this done successfully. My guess is that the company will spend millions of dollars on a World to E1 upgrade/migration.

Personally, I have worked in several World software shops which didn't have Oracle/JDE support and we were able to successfully manage the 1099 updates without assistance from Oracle/JDE. My primary concern on staying with JDE World would be having a situation where we again needed new IBM i media for Oracle-supplied JDE World objects.
I'm not certain that Oracle would supply that media via Sustaining support.

Questions:
1) Do Dream Writer forms migrate easily to E1 ?
2) Does Oracle have migration tools which will convert the JDE World FASTR and WW's to the native E1 report writer, or do these have to be rewritten ?

As an aside, we also aren't sure that Enterprise One is the route we really need to take - there are many factions within the company that are not friendly to the JDE solution and everyone thinks that having a new solution which runs "in the cloud" will solve everyone's problems.

Thanks and best regards,

 

[Tony_D]

We are in a similar situation. We need the 1099 updates, but that's about all we need from Oracle. We have many legacy programs written in COBOL that the top management have relied on for 40 years. We also have over 40,000 BOMs. I received a call from Oracle stating support will be expensive after the EOL of JDE World, yet they couldn't give me the name of any companies offering the support nor could they give me an idea of how much the support would be. I wonder how many companies are on JDE World.

 

[Larry_Jones]

All -

Background:

I work in a very large JDE World A9.4 shop running on IBM i 7.3.

We are current with JDE World A9.4 software and pay for annual software support to Oracle, which is a significant amount of money given that we really only really need annual 1099 updates for our software for tax reporting.

We rarely if ever call the JDE support line to report bugs (especially minor ones) because everyone knows that's a joke.

The company got caught in a jam a few years back because they had dropped Oracle support for the World software (version A8.1) which was then running on an iSeries with V5R4.

When OS/400 V5R4 hit end of life they had to upgrade to new IBM i Power hardware in order to upgrade the IBM i OS to version 7.3, leading to the inevitable issue of needing new media for the JDE objects from Oracle to continue using the JDE software on the new machine, since the Oracle-supplied objects running on V5R4 could not be migrated (re-encapsulated during restore) to run on the new OS.

After being off support for 10 years, the company was required to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to Oracle and get back on Oracle JDE support in order to get the new media, and continue to pay Oracle for support since that time.

Current dilemma:

As you probably already know, Oracle has set a date for end of support for JDE World 9.4.

"Premier" Support reached end-of-life in April 2022.
"Extended" Support ends in April 2025, so it appears that we'll continue to get 1099 updates until then.
"Sustaining" Support is indicated as indefinite.

However, noted below is the Oracle statement on "Sustaining" support:

Sustaining Support

Sustaining Support puts you in control of your upgrade strategy. When Premier Support expires, if you choose not to purchase Extended Support, or when Extended Support expires, Sustaining Support will be available for as long as you license your Oracle products. With Sustaining Support, you receive technical support, including access to our online support tools, knowledgebases, and technical support experts. You benefit from

- Major product and technology releases
- Technical support
- Access to My Oracle Support
- Fixes, updates, and critical patch updates created during Premier Support and Extended Support (if offered and only after the Extended Support period ends)
- Upgrade scripts created during the Premier Support stage

Sustaining Support does not include

- New updates, fixes, security alerts, data fixes, and critical patch updates
- New tax, legal, and regulatory updates
- New upgrade scripts  Certification with new third-party products/versions  Certification with new Oracle products

For more specifics on Premier Support, Extended Support, and Sustaining Support, please refer to Oracle’s “Technical Support Policies.”

What happens next...

Because we are reaching end-of-life on World, our Oracle business partner has been urging us to consider migration to E1, but there are many issues we must consider.

We are a property management company with:
- External property management systems (Yardi and MRI) which feed data into JDE
- External payroll system
- JDE GL/AP/AR systems
- JDE Property Management system
- JDE Fixed Assets system
- Hundreds of JDE World customizations
- Many Custom-written programs on the IBM i system which interface with JDE
- Custom-written Tax system which interfaces with JDE GL
- High-volume importation of journal entries via CSV files from external systems
- High-volume importation of payables (both regular and manual) via CSV files into JDE from external systems (Workspace)
- Import of Payroll data into JDE general ledger
- Hundreds of FASTR's, many of which create journal entries
- Hundreds of World Writer reports

I'm trying to get a handle on the amount of time that will be needed to get all of this done successfully. My guess is that the company will spend millions of dollars on a World to E1 upgrade/migration.

Personally, I have worked in several World software shops which didn't have Oracle/JDE support and we were able to successfully manage the 1099 updates without assistance from Oracle/JDE. My primary concern on staying with JDE World would be having a situation where we again needed new IBM i media for Oracle-supplied JDE World objects.
I'm not certain that Oracle would supply that media via Sustaining support.

Questions:
1) Do Dream Writer forms migrate easily to E1 ?
2) Does Oracle have migration tools which will convert the JDE World FASTR and WW's to the native E1 report writer, or do these have to be rewritten ?

As an aside, we also aren't sure that Enterprise One is the route we really need to take - there are many factions within the company that are not friendly to the JDE solution and everyone thinks that having a new solution which runs "in the cloud" will solve everyone's problems.

Thanks and best regards,

My 2 cents.
If you go the E1 migration route in 10 years your company could be facing the same dilemma again. E1 is basically sunsetting as Oracle basically has it in maintenance mode now. Very little in the way of substantial applications software upgrades has occurred for some time.
Certainly you need to do your due diligence in determining what other solutions can be found.
Good luck

 

[Ericl]

Hi SLandess. You described very well the challenges confronting you. Please read very carefully https://www.itjungle.com/2021/04/07/jd-edwards-roadmap-reveals-decisions-to-be-made/

 

[certitune]

My $0.02 as well: We've been on E1 for almost four years. Few above me would admit it, but I'm convinced it was a costly mistake. As stated, rarely do applications improve functionally for the masses; those "upgrades" are often very narrowly focused, or for localizations. People are raving about the improvements in the tools functionality (orchestrations, etc.), but that will largely be a full paradigm shift if you are comfortable in World. The "coding" (ERs, NERs, BSFNs) for E1 is ugly, and customizations are expensive (in multiple ways). My biggest problem is the complexity (and resulting instability) of the platform. They attempted to go out of their way to account for the things AS/400 (IBM i) shops take for granted: MSGQs, JOBQs, OUTQs, subsystems, etc., and did a total screw-up job. If we IPL'ed our /400 twice a year, it was because we chose to do so. We are now to the point in E1 if we don't reboot the entire production stack (maybe 20 servers all presumably talking to each other) at least every other weekend, we will invariably suffer downtime. Things quit working or start crashing, database changes disappear, etc. And that doesn't begin to discuss the day-to-day nuisances such as adding a UDC (F0005) value requiring a clearing of (a particular database) cache for each of our HTML servers just so the users can actually access the new value. All the while, our E1 "partner" has made millions off us, and Oracle maintenance is six figures annually.

To answer specific questions, even when versions migrated, whether that was "clean" or not depended on how many changes exist between World processing options and E1 processing options, assuming a 1:1 correlation in programs. There is no converter for FASTR nor WW, nor is there what I would a call a comparable tool. Their report design tool and UBE process, again, is a really poor attempt to account for what you could do in AS/400 + RPG. FASTRs in particular may point you toward the need for a third-party reporting tool.

 

[DenverEagle]

Check this post out on helping World customers. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bria...-/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop