JDE Worldwide Deployment - Centralized vs Regional Model

avictor

Member
Background: Preparing to deploy OneWorld Xe to Europe (Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, etc), South America (Peru, Chile, Venezula, Brazil, Columbia), Dominican Republic, Thailand over the next 1-3 years.

Question: Would appreciate feedback based on operating costs, staffing costs, risks of downtime and system maintenance of the two models, which model overall seems the model a company should adopt.
 
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
 
Alika -

We are in year 2 of a 3 year rollout very similar to yours plus 3 or 4 double-byte installations. All told we will end up with 5 or 6 centrally managed OneWorld installations supporting 400+ users. All users attach via Citrix, with a small number of local develops using PCAnywhere or Terminal Services to access fat clients for this purpose. Central support staff who are heavily involved in the rollout are also on fat clients. We are looking at the web server for some of our future connections, but not as a worldwide solution. Latency is such that we might use it in North America and maybe Europe, but we expect Asia to stay on Citrix servers for the forseeable future.

In our case we are converting a number of locally installed World systems to the centrally managed OneWorld environments. What we found was that most of our locations had 1 head count or less supporting World technically and the AS/400. In some cases IBM would set up the 400 initially and a power user would do what little admin was required daily. That meant a local OneWorld installation would require at least one additional head per location, just to cover CNC and system administration. The central model saved us 10+ increased headcount worldwide. The enterprise server is pretty big, but still cheaper than a bunch of local servers. It will also allow us to retire 10+ AS/400s and related support costs, since JDE was generally our only app based on the 400.

Our WAN costs have gone up, and in some locations cost is becoming an issue since we allocate the network back to the locations. However we are looking at other options like VPN as potential future solutions.

One thing the central model gives us is control. We have complete control over things like the chart of accounts and consistency in how various parts of the system are used. Plus we get the benefit of instant (or almost) consolidation in US$ even though all of the details are entered in the various local currencies. We've increased central headcount by 3 to provide CNC coverage, but that also gives us a bench in case of turnover, vacation, etc. And it is still a lot fewer than if we installed locally.
 
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