RE: Hypothetical question

[QSRVBAS <qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

midrange-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>  10. Hypothetical question (jeff_carey@xxxxxxxxxx)
>
> Say your company had several instances of JDE globally, mostly running on
> AS/400's.  Say further that during a global meeting it was stated that the
> direction of the company was to move from the AS/400 and iSeries to Sun
> Solaris.
>
> What are some key reasons that this would be a bad idea?

And the number 1 reason is:

  1. You're moving FROM iSeries OS/400 TO Sun Solaris!

More seriously, do you have any green-screen custom programming? While 
ODBC can be implemented relatively easily against most platforms, 
implementing numerous subfile programs can be a bit trickier. Other 
tricky areas exist.

A few years ago, I was brought in to a company to do a couple weeks of 
IS facilities management while the manager was off on a lengthy 
honeymoon. The company had been bought a couple years earlier and was 18 
months into a conversion to a parent-company Digital platform (-- it was 
a "viable" solution at the time). The original conversion estimate by 
the parent-company IS group was 6 months; when I arrived, the current 
estimate of remaining time to completion was -- 6 months. Why? 
Green-screen subfile programs.

Every platform has features that can be hard to duplicate elsewhere. If 
such features are taken advantage of extensively, any conversion can be 
difficult.

You know what features you've used. List them and research how they can 
be implemented on Sun. Work management? Security? Communications? 
Database? ?? If you're 'package applications' all the way and the same 
packages exist as seems true for you, there's probably no big deal. Grab 
the opportunity and run with it. Lead the charge if possible. Your life 
probably won't change that much except for expanded knowledge.

But if you have significant customization, there's a lot of detail work 
ahead. More than likely you'll even end up knowing iSeries better than 
now and it'll be quite a while before it goes out the door.

Tom Liotta

--
Tom Liotta
The PowerTech Group, Inc.
19426 68th Avenue South
Kent, WA 98032
Phone  253-872-7788 x313
Fax    253-872-7904
http://www.powertech.com