Future of BPCS?

[WASHBURNCCINC@xxxxxxx]

Is BPCS dead. I don’t think so. Would I pick it as my ERP solution if I 
were doing a software evaluation? That is another question.

I just went through this with a company about 3 months ago and they decided not 
to go with BPCS and here were their main concerns. I am not saying that these 
are bad or good but this is what they were.

A little background on the company that decided not to go with BPCS. They are a 
manufacturing plant that makes metal fixtures. Their IS programming and support 
staff is comprised of 4 people varying from ages 25 to 55. Their computer 
system is an AS/400 model 720. The company has aprox. 125 employees.

Here are the main technical reasons from the IS team for not going with BPCS. 
There were other business reasons on why they did not go with BPCS but I was 
not made aware of these.

1.  The new versions of BPCS are written in Asset which they would have to 
train the IS staff on how to use it. The staff did not like this because (In 
their opinion Asset is a proprietary tool used only by BPCS shops) The staff 
felt like this pigeon holed them for the future of working in BPCS shops.
2.  Trying to debug a RPG program that was written in Asset was very cumbersome 
at best.
3.  The way you have to setup a user to work in a Test environment when it 
comes to the GUI applications was not as easy as just having an option on the 
menu of the AS/400 to get into the Test environment.
4.  You have to develop in Asset but then it has to take the action diagram and 
still generate RPG, DDS, etc. and compile them. Which just added another step 
to wait for.
5.  The could not understand that if 95% of the existing client base of BPCS 
shops are on AS/400s why they are trying to use tools to work for every box. 
They understood that SSA-GT might want to get into other platforms. Why not use 
the right tool for the right system? Rather they trying to use the same tool 
for all systems.
6.


Again this is just one company and their opinion.