RE: possible Lawson newbie

I recently started a new position where Lawson is implemented for HR and 
Payroll only on an iSeries (V5R2) at 7.2.2.6.  I attended the local users 
group this month, and am disappointed in the lack of attention given to 
the iSeries platform.  The iSeries platform seems to be an afterthought. 
We are planning on upgrading to 8.1 when the "skip upgrade" becomes 
available for the iSeries.  It has been available for quite some time for 
Unix and Windows.  No one from Lawson can give us a date for the 
availability of this feature.  When attending sessions on some 
applications (such as Application Maintenance Toolset), the first thing 
the presenter says is that this application is not yet available for the 
iSeries.  Again, there was no iSeries availability date given.

During the round table addressing upgrades, other than us, the only people 
in attendance were Unix and Windows folks.  A Unix implementation reported 
that their "skip upgrade" conversion from 7.2.26 to 8.1 ran for three 
DAYS....and they were happy with this since the first attempt took 30 
DAYS!  Granted, it is a large installation (10,000 users), but is it 
acceptable being down for days at a time to run conversions?  Supposedly, 
there is a "convert while active" feature, but the consensus from the 
group was that it either didn't work as expected or was more work than it 
was worth.

On the positive side, their web based support (LIS) is very nice, and 
seems to be quite responsive.  However, I haven't had any serious 
incidents to report yet.

Additionally, it was announced June 2, 2005 that Lawson is merging with 
Intentia International.  US headquarters will be in Minneapolis; 
International headquarters in Stockholm.  As with all mergers, it is yet 
to be determined what impact this will have on existing customers.

Being new to Lawson myself, I'm curious as to how many other iSeries 
installations exist, and specifically, their upgrade experiences.