RE: ERP Comments

> From: Booth Martin
>
> >The heads down green screeners that you have don't need new
> stuff.  Chances
> are they know the system and will resist change anyway.  Its the casual
> users with the need.  Put your first efforts on the casual user
> and manager
> s needs.
> >Start now, today, with some small thing.  Show what you can do given the
> chance.  You'd have a new application up and running as a demo of
> what your
> shop can do if allowed.

I wasn't going to say anything about my product because I moderate this list
and I don't want to be too salesy, but I have to jump in here and agree with
Booth (in part because I so rarely do <grin>).  It's been a weird day - I've
publicly agreed with both Booth and Walden.  Then again, it is April Fool's
Day, so anything goes <chuckle>.

Anyway, the issue is exactly what Booth pointed out: most of your users
probably don't want or need a new interface.  They're happy with what they
have, probably because they've worked for years with your programming staff
to tweak your applications so that they do exactly what you want.

And this is the other point - in most shops that have developed systems over
a long period of time, your biggest asset is not your legacy programs, but
your legacy programmers.  Only they know why certain programs were written
in the way they were written; to try and translate all that code into
another language is difficult enough, but to try and convert all those
man-years of expertise from RPG to object-oriented Java is nearly
impossible.  If you move to J2EE, chances are that not all of your
programmers aer going to make the switch.

Buying another vendor's package is a simpler solution, but what are the
chances that they support the same features you've added over time?  Now,
before you can even get your system running, you ave to take the time to
retrofit all of your custom code to the new application and modify its
database accordingly.

That's why I built my product, PSC/400.  PSC/400 will allow you to quickly
(as in overnight) convert your entire system so that it will run in a
browser, but still look and feel like the original green screen.  This
allows you to move to the browser, but yet still keep your primary user base
satisfied.

At the same time, it provides a simple JSP interface to your legacy systems
that you can then customize into powerful web applications for the casual
users and for management.  You can add all the bells and whistles that they
expect in a GUI, but still leave your primary programming language as RPG.

And, the converted programs run entirely in batch, thus saving you
significantly in hardware costs, especially on the new iSeries models.  You
can easily save tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware
costs.

Joe Pluta
President
Pluta Brothers Design, Inc.
Developers of PSC/400
http://www.plutabrothers.com/p1.html