Re: How to transfer from one bpcs system to another the financial module?

hqin

You are asking a question that goes outside the scope of this forum.

I think you should be on the MIDRANGE-L forum asking how to arrange to have 
two AS/400 talk to each other in such a way that the software applications 
are not aware that there is two AS/400, but think it is all one machine, so 
that in BPCS you do not have to do anything special.  I am on MIDRANGE-L & 
have seen posts there where companies have more than two AS/400 & users on 
one talking to data on other, as easily as we use the internet, except they 
are posting questions about performance.

At Central Industries we have 3 factories ... 4 facilities because one 
factory is doing 2 totally different kinds of operations & we gave each one a 
facility.  We had the choice of one AS/400 at each site, with 
inter-communications, so that data relevant to facility EV resided at EV, and 
data relevant to facility GW resides at GW, etc. and all employees of all 
facilities would be able to access all data, which sounds like what you think 
you want.  Instead we went to one AS/400 for the whole enterprise, for 
reasons of economy & performance.

It costs less to have one super fast high performance AS/400 at corporate HQ, 
with folks 600 miles away connected by state-of-art telecommunication phone 
lines, 24 hours a day, and only one copy of BPCS software, with less 
modification work, although the user license fee will be higher, than to have 
one mediocre AS/400 at each facility, with multiple copies of BPCS software, 
both to be modified, and the people 600 miles away get better BPCS 
performance over high speed communications line to high performance AS/400 
than they get from mediocre AS/400 actually where they are.  

Consider also the cost of staffing tech support ... when you have unconnected 
AS/400, there has to be technical staff at each site.  When there is one 
AS/400 & all offices interconnected to it, you have technical staff where the 
AS/400 is physically located but 100% of the enterprise gets their services.

You can have different rules for each facility, up to a point, but this does 
impose a level of corporate HQ financial control over all remote facilities, 
which may not be desired in your enterprise.  One of the big advantages of 
this for us was a reduction in support staff load outside of MIS.  There are 
people who buy raw materials for the enterprise, do the engineering work for 
what we make, the accounting department, and so forth.  When you have 
distributed host computers, then each site needs duplication of that kind of 
personnel.  When you are all on one network, a person at one office can do 
this work for all offices.

Aside from the placement of personnel so that each office has its complement 
of job functions, there is the duplication of data entry because both 
computer systems will need data maintaintained that is also in the other one, 
which increases the overhead of people to do it.  There was a time that 
people were a dime a dozen & the computer technology cost a fortune, but the 
world has changed.  Now one of the more expensive aspects of corporate 
technology is delivering education to the people so they can use the cheap 
technology productively.

Now we have more user work stations, than the IBM Remote Controller will 
support at one site, and when we were on leased phone lines, the cost from ma 
bell to hook up extra phone connection 2 inches away from existing one was 
increase phone bill in perpetuity $1,000.00 per month American $.  We went 
with a technique in which ma bell thought the line was point to point (keep 
phone bill low), while AS/400 thought the line was multi-point (one time 
expense for some more equipment).

There were 2 choices for doing this

IBM Tailing Modem
Non-IBM Controller Clusters from IO or Perle - we went with latter

An IBM Tailing Modem has like 4 cables coming out so that 4 IBM Remote 
Controllers can hang on one Modem

The Non-IBM Controller Clusters use one modem with cable to a box that can 
contain up to 8 simulations of a remote controller - you can start with a few 
& inexpensively add cards to increase capacity.

We recently switched our telecommunications from leased lines to frame relay.
Frame relay gave the enterprise better performance at astronomically lower 
prices.
We used to have separate leased lines for AS/400, PC network, voice 
connections between our offices.  Now all of that goes over the same frame 
relay & the speed is dramatically enhanced for everyone & security is 
excellent because it is like an intranet over part of the phone company 
system.  Some of the folks on the PC network can sign onto the AS/400 & it 
does not matter if they are in the same building as the AS/400 or 600 miles 
away.  Performance is great.

The financial picture & the performance picture for deciding how to proceed 
rests on 5 cost structures, and the availability of the right kind of tech 
support to set this up, which may not be the same in all countries ... IBM 
Hardware ... BPCS Pricing ... Communications Industry options ... Technical 
staff that you need in-house .... Enterprise staff needed for support roles 
that need to be served in all locations of the enterprise, outside of MIS ... 
you could have a big expense for one side of the equation that is off-set by 
savings on other structures listed

Again, like I said at the outset, you need to be taking this discussion to 
MIDRANGE-L whose participants are far more proficient at this type of 
know-how than I, but you could also try the AS/400 on-line forums.  Feel free 
to forward my BS to other technical gurus & ask for a second opinion on how 
much of my total story makes sense.

>  From:    Qin_Huang@schindler.com (Qin Huang)
>  
>  We have financial center BJ and SW, both in BPCS( same version ) but in
>        different AS/400, and there is no connection between this two AS/400.
>  
>  Now we would like the BJ finance module also run in the AS/400 of SW, with 
> all the date used to be run in BJ location, how to make it?
>  
>  Any kind advice will be very much appreciated.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
http://www.cen-elec.com MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor
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