Software Maintenance

[KCurley13]

Dear List,

Has your company or do you know of any companies that have dropped support
from PeopleSoft/ JDE? We are on World A7.2 and have been in a
self-supporting maintenance mode for quite a long time. We have bronze
level support, which we pay big dollars for and the only support we
currently receive is the yearend download for W2 and 1099 (which is A7.3 by
the way). The only other support we utilized is the JDE knowledge garden
from time to time. I have heard that other companies have considered this
and some have done it by utilizing a 3rd party vendor for support. However,
I do not know how these companies went about it and what obstacles or
roadblocks they may have hit. Also were their any contractual issues or new
contractual requirements required after separating from this relationship?
Any information or guidance would be appreciated. Thanks.

Karen Curley
Manager, Enterprise Application Software Development
Integrated Business Solutions
(732) 938-1013
mailto:[email protected]

 

[ssolberg]

I will be watching this post as well. My boss is seriously considering dropping support. We also pay some huge bucks for very little that we get from them. We may wait until we hear more about cume 15 and what it offers. (rumors of an integrated web-face for World in there...)

 

[SallyWhite]

I was with a JDE client when we made the decision to drop support, due to the high level of customization we had started and wanted to complete. Well.....when IBM told us they would no longer support the hardware we were running on, and that new hardware came w/ the latest and greatest OS/400, we were so out of date that JDE could no longer guarantee their software would work on the new hardware/OS. So that's a real pickle. (Immediately thereafter, the client went bankrupt for other reasons, and its assets were acquired by a competitor who converted to some other software package, so I never actually had to face the consequences.) Sure is something to keep in mind, though! If there are reliable and stable 3rd party companies who will guarantee support of older JDE releases as the OS/400 upgrades, you may be able to take the chance. Some of the issues I've encountered in upgrading OS are changes in calls to APIs and changes to trigger programs (V5R1 issue), which are highly technical situations. Hope this helps!

 

[Jim_rubino]

Karen,

We are on A7.3 Cume 14. We just upgraded our AS/400's to V5R2 and to Cume
14 from Cume 10, this past year.
We had lowered our maintenance to 24/7 M-F only. We had a few problems and
needed to have weekend support and we
were able to get it for a fee. We would have been in a major bind if we did
not have maintenance when we had to go to the
new AS/400 systems and then to Cume 14 because of the Vertex change.

So I would be concerned about any of the other Non-JDE systems that might
change and affect JDE's functionality.
The IBM operating system could affect some of the running of Dream Writers
and World Writers. Most of these programs from
JDE are not supplied with source code, so maintaining them would be
difficult. If you are using or have the need to use Vertex
Sales Taxing module, Vertex can and has changed the parms it needs to
calculate tax, therefore JDE programs had to be changed
to accommodate these.

I know the cost of maintenance if high and if you are like most companies,
you don't need their support very often. I used to work for a
consulting company a few years back and we supported many clients on JDE and
we did a good job......I am sure there are other companies
out there who will do the same for you and for less than what you would pay
in maintenance per year to JDE. It would be difficult for when
you will need to get a program object that you do not have the source for.

Jim Rubino
Senior Programmer Analyst
FIKE CORPORATION (r)
704 South 10th Street
Blue Springs, Mo. 64015
(816) 229-6216 Ext. 1079
World Software Technical Editor for JDEtips

 

[miaconis]

For what it's worth I'll through my two cents into the discussion. I was at
a client who installed JD Edwards on an AS/400 before A1.0 was even out (it
was a system 38 version, F5.4 I think). As our company progressed with the
software we made a large amount of customizations to nearly all of the
modules we were using. We had upgraded several times and had eventually
reached the A4.2 version. We were on that version for quite some time and
continued our customizations. At the point where A6 had been released we
looked at the effort to upgrade and determined because of our modifications
that it would take approximately a year to re-apply all of our changes and
test thoroughly in order to do an upgrade. At that point we began removing
all of the JD Edwards programs we were not using and we hired a consultant
to develop our own menu and security system, and a way to get around the
DREAMWriter issues. At that point we no longer had a JD Edwards system and
so we dropped support. As you can see it was quite an effort but within a
few years there was a payback comparing the development cost vs. the
maintenance cost. Bear in mind also that this was a very customized shop to
begin with and the innovations coming with later releases of World were of
little or no value to us.

Today I am a consultant working with several JD Edwards clients and my
advice to them is always the same. Stay on maintenance and keep your
customizations to an absolute minimum. Write independent programs to handle
your unique company/industry needs as opposed to modifying JD Edwards code.
If the maintenance becomes too large for your budget to handle, try to
negotiate a customized maintenance plan with PeopleSoft. At any rate do not
take dropping maintenance lightly. You may find yourself in a future
situation where you will have to spend a large amount of money just to keep
your existing systems running.

Mike Iaconis, President
Soar Technology Solutions
330-722-8106

 

[KSmithCPA]

If you are running payroll and producing your own w2's (and it sounds like you are) I would strongly recomend maintaining support. How will you reproduce the year end update without suppport? How will you update JDE to be compatible with newer versions of Vertex?

 

[cgraves]

Karen, Tomorrow (Friday) will work. Call my cell at 503-969-2115

You can call me now If you wish...i'm available