ERP Solutions – Popular and Optimized on IBM i

Did you know that the biggest business applications in the world are available and optimized on IBM i? For example, IBM i customers can choose from SAP's NetWeaver and Business Suite, Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne & World, Lawson's M3 ERP Enterprise & S3 Financial Management, and Infor's XA & ERP/LX.

Merging a new set of ERP applications into your business is a significant task in itself, so it is a great time to look at our logo - the i is for business. Keeping your tried and true IBM i infrastructure a constant will make the task of implementing one of the larger scale ERP solutions easier because you'll focus all of your company's energy on merging the application into the business instead of piecing together a new platform infrastructure and hiring additional people to run it.

The IBM i advantages that you expect still apply with large ERP solutions. Subsystems and PowerVM can easily separate and prioritize workloads, or allow you to share your IBM i system between your legacy application and a new ERP solution during the new implementation. The integrated DB2 database is still just as simple and easy to use as it is with your current applications.

Since many of the ISV solutions are available on multiple OS and DB platforms, it is important to the IBM team make sure they are not just available on i, but that they are optimized for IBM i. The Rochester development lab has been working closely with these large ISVs for quite some time, starting back in 1994 when we formed a team to work with SAP to bring their R/3 product to IBM i. Over time, this IBM team has also built relationships with JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, SSA, Intentia, Oracle, Lawson and Infor.

Sharing future technical directions with each other is one aspect of these partnerships. The ISVs each have features that they would like to see in upcoming IBM i releases - from SQL to TCP/IP and IFS and everything in between. In turn, IBM shares our upcoming plans so that the ISVs can prepare to take advantage of new technologies like IBM Technology for Java (J9) JVM, PowerHA, IASPs, SSD and DB2 field encryption/masking.

However, working together to optimize the ISV experience on IBM i doesn't just stop at functions and features. Benchmarks for marketing purposes help us find and solve scaling issues in both IBM i and the ISV applications. Testing between IBM and ISVs of new technologies often result in technical papers describing the new solutions. When it may be less clear whether the root of a problem lies with IBM or the ISV, our relationships make it easier to work together to solve the issue. There are also IBMers who work directly with IBM i customers as ISV consultants out of the IBM Lab Services organization, and can provide ISV-specific training to your existing IBM i staff or can help get you started with an ISV project.

So when your company is thinking of using a large ISV solution, remember the work our team puts into carrying our integrated value proposition to these solutions. Rather than put an ERP application on another platform, where you will probably devote more time, money and people to the solution, think about the option of putting the solution on IBM i. This will allow you to focus on integrating the application into your business knowing that your IBM i infrastructure is up to the task.

And one final note, if you are an IBM i client who uses SAP, be sure to follow @SAPonIBMi. Its owner, Ron Schmerbauch, is on the ISV team I mentioned above. He and his teammates helped me extensively with this post, and they help clients all over the world with their ERP solutions.

 

Twitter: #ibmi #SAP #JDE @Steve_Will_IBMi

 

Comments

[Gerri Schubert]

Hello-

I'm looking for data mapping tools that are compatible with IBMi (as/400). Something that will display directories, joined file relationships, and all file keys. Does such a tool exist?
Thanks,
Gerri

[Scott Forstie]

Hello Gerri,
I have a few IBM tools for your consideration.

1) System i Navigator has good facilities for graphical navigation of the IFS file systems and DB2 for i. I particularly like the ability to drag and drop a file directly from my PC to an IFS directory. iNav also has robust support for Schema level navigation and action, as well as something called Database Navigator Map which allows you to select objects and see and work with relationships.

System i Navigator has plenty of other features too.

2) Infosphere Data Architect - this is a database specific product.

Highlights include:
- Enterprise data modeling and management
* Compare & synchronize
* Version Control
* Forward & reverse engineering
- Model analyzer for enterprise standard conformance
- Database development – SQL and Java Procedures and Functions

Regards, Scott Forstie

Links:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/software/access/windows/index.html

and

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/optim/data-architect/

[Steve Pugh]

Steve

You hit the nail on the head, Steve, with your first sentence: “Did you know that the biggest business applications in the world are available and optimized on IBM i?”

IBM i is a wonderful platform and with it comes the reliability, scalability, versatility, and overall bulletproof nature of the software.

My issue, however, is with the premise that an ERP implementation lives up to its promise, particularly at a scale for any organization that places a premium on the core benefits of IBM i. Real-time capabilities, the ability to see what is going on within your company as it happens, and facilitating operational coordination across departments have been at the heart of the ERP pitch. The problem is, in practice ERP falls woefully short of those promises and its customers that pay for those shortcomings.

Just last month, IDG New Service chronicled “10 biggest ERP software failures of 2011.” (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222864/10_biggest_ERP_software_failures_of_2011?taxonomyId=144&pageNumber=1) In elaborating on such misfortunes as cost overruns, software incompatibilities, and legal claims and counterclaims, the story concluded that 2011 “was another year filled with high-profile problem ERP projects.”

I’m not writing to simply torpedo ERP, but to challenge the all-too-prevalent assumption that ERP is THE way to go. In its place, consider a best-of-class strategy that allows a company flexibility about the best software to install, how to configure, and (very importantly), how to plan for the inevitable changes that companies are certain to encounter (IDC puts the cost of changing an ERP system at $1.2 million, with downstream costs that are significantly higher). This is in stark contrast with the real-world findings IBM i/Coda Financials customers have experienced, where IBM i users have continued to use a world-class operating systems that still delivers while replacing their out of date and inadequate financial system with the best-of-class power of Coda Financials.

Don’t just take my word for it – check out this video on the high cost of change: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo8hZEWRV4E.

Steve Pugh, CEO of UNIT4 CODA, Inc.