Blue Stack vs. Red Stack (again?)

Ian Simmons

Member
Hello All - I have seen various threads on the question of Blue vs. Red for EnterpriseOne implementations, but I would like to get an honest and objective opinion from anyone kind enough to contribute.

We have been on a very old release of JDE (OneWorld Xe, SP23) for many years, in a Citrix (non-Web) environment. We are planning an upgrade to EnterpriseOne 9.? in about a year's time. We have been running on AS/400 / iSeries / IBM i successfully all that time and it has never let us down. We have never employed a DBA as it looks after itself, we just conduct purges from time to time; and we transact high volumes of data.

Various third parties are telling us that Oracle are not 'selling' Blue Stack any more and therefore any E1 components that rely on it must be supported by IBM and not Oracle. This seems to be leading people away from DB2 for i and onto Oracle, at least anecdotally. I can fully understand why Oracle would want to market JDE that way.

So my questions are these: is it inevitable that anyone staying with JDE and Oracle will inevitably have to follow Red Stack away from Blue, buy their DB and servers? Will we therefore have to re-write every interface if we go down this route? Have you been faced with this decision to migrate away to Red Stack, and what did you decide in the end? Are Oracle really positioning themselves so that it will become difficult for IBM customers?

Any advice you can give may be very helpful. Our parent company in the US is 100% IBM but they are still on World; we are not; though my preference would be to stay with IBM.

Thanks
Ian
 
Ian,

You won't find an 'honest and objective' opinion here, which is not to say anyone will by lying. We just all have our biases...

So having said that, I'm a 'purple stack' person. Since your staff is already IBM i, I'd suggest you keep the i and decide if you want to go WebSphere (IBM) or WebLogic (Oracle). In my opinion WebLogic is easier to get running and keep running well. WebSphere is harder to get running but since it effectively ships 'all doors shut' once it is running, it is pretty secure. Weblogic on the other hand ships all doors open and depending on your audit community, you may enjoy securing it.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom Davidson
 
Hey Ian,

just a couple thoughts to consider.

Unless Oracle has changed their licensing terms, the Oracle DB included in the Red Stack is specific to JDE only - meaning you are NOT licensed to use that DB license for any third party or home grown applications.

If you had planned on moving other apps data to Oracle that really means that you'd be paying for a DB license ...

Glad you recognized the interfaces issue. Depending on number and scope this can be more work then the JD upgrade :) Particularly if you're not leaving your iSeries behind - interfacing to IBM from Windows/Linux platforms is more work than it should be.

On the other hand ... you can buy a lot of high performance hardware for a fraction of the cost of a iBox.
 
Hi Tom and Larry,

Thanks a lot for your input. I had no idea you could use WebLogic with IBM i, or that the Oracle DB is licensed to JDE only. I'd never even heard of 'purple stack' until now! Worth bearing in mind.

Many thanks again
Ian
 
Hey Ian,

just a couple thoughts to consider.

Unless Oracle has changed their licensing terms, the Oracle DB included in the Red Stack is specific to JDE only - meaning you are NOT licensed to use that DB license for any third party or home grown applications.

If you had planned on moving other apps data to Oracle that really means that you'd be paying for a DB license ...

Glad you recognized the interfaces issue. Depending on number and scope this can be more work then the JD upgrade :) Particularly if you're not leaving your iSeries behind - interfacing to IBM from Windows/Linux platforms is more work than it should be.

On the other hand ... you can buy a lot of high performance hardware for a fraction of the cost of a iBox.


This, plus the database you used to get with Technology Foundation ("IBM Tech Foundation") was DB2 UDB. Totally separate from DB2/400 on IBM i, which was not licensed through Tech Foundation as far as I know.

Also, the database license in the Oracle Tech Foundation is Oracle Standard Edition. There are some other components such as the Deployment Server and Developer Clients for the 9.1 release (this is a requirement now) and Oracle Internet Directory which do require Enterprise Edition, but those are limited right-to-use licenses for OEE, so you're covered there. But for larger customers, they're going to be limited by what you can do with Oracle Standard Edition and it makes a lot of sense to consider Oracle Enterprise Edition or even SQL Server if the cost of OEE is too high for your budget. And there's nothing wrong with sticking with WebSphere and DB2/400 on IBM i if that's your platform of choice.

Also, the end of the OEM agreement with IBM is I believe why Oracle is no longer offering the IBM Tech Foundation. They're not forcing anyone to migrate at this point in time. But they do believe in and promote the value of the Oracle Technology Foundation for EnterpriseOne.
 
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These are interesting questions. At my current employer, we moved from one AS/400 to a Windows / SQL configuration. On to your questions...

>>is it inevitable that anyone staying with JDE and Oracle will inevitably have to follow Red Stack away from Blue, buy their DB and servers?

I don't believe this is an inevitable conclusion. I think it is a solid conclusion however that the more time you spend trying to license Oracle software, the more you may want to jump a bridge.

>>Will we therefore have to re-write every interface if we go down this route?

JDE is designed to work with a variety of databases. Your interfaces should not hook directly into the database; when you do that you lose this level of abstraction and you also lose any advantage of the security related filtering. Look into more formal API's, XML, Java, etc. In short, you are working "Old school".

>>Have you been faced with this decision to migrate away to Red Stack, and what did you decide in the end?

We had an option but there isn't a lot of love for Oracle products. The consensus is that the skillset is too expensive and the benefits are too few.

>>Are Oracle really positioning themselves so that it will become difficult for IBM customers?

Oracle has always tried to make IBM customers life difficult. This hasn't changed in years and years..

Good luck with your decision

Malcolm
 
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