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IBM iSeries or Windows server?
Rabid Cougar asks: "I am the network administrator for a small manufacturing company. Our current ERP system has outlived its usefulness and we are in the process of selecting another package. Our present ERP system runs on an IBM AS/400, but there are those in the company who believe we should switch to something that only runs on Windows. My position is this: if we can find software that will meet our needs that runs on an IBM iSeries (new name for the AS/400) then we'd be certifiably crazy to move over to the Windows platform. A co-worker insists there are a ton of reasons to avoid the iSeries like the plague. I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but if you were to bet your career on this issue, which side would you choose and why?"
You choice chould be swayed by security; I don't know about the new i5/OS generation, but back when it was called OS/400 it had one of the highest ratings for both security and stability of any mid-range system in its market. Whether this is because OS/400 really was more secure or just too obscure to exploit is up to personal opinion.
Qsecofr vs. root, eh?
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
It got so bad that the processing teams actually created little pieces of card that they used as tickets to ensure that they could access workflow (web-based run on windows).
The users within SI (my dept) have told us that if we ever force them to do the same with our applications, which include DebtManager on AS/400, then we can expect to be very bruised.
To answer your question, I would point out the mass of windows problems and ask someone to show anything that has gone wrong with (insert midrange / mainframe platform here) that has caused the same effect.
Good luck.
... but it seems pretty obvious to me that there's a pretty reasonable way to solve this in a rational manner with a trade study. obviously, the more money at stake, the more time you'll have to be willing to invest in the trade study. as a rough guide:
/then/ ask again whether the iSeries or a windows based solution is better. otherwise, your choice of platform is already made for you.
1) write down the features you need in an ERP
2) find ERP packages which fit the bill
3) define appropriate metrics (cost of administration, expected amount of down time, etc.) i realize that many of these will be fairly fuzzy, but you can still get a reasonable idea. metrics should include both costs (upfront and maintence / tco type estimates, whether you already have admins to do the job or will you have to hire, etc.) and benefits / utility
4) map out on a matrix how each ERP package performs overall
5) pick the best ERP in terms of cost/benefit
6) if the winning ERP runs on multiple hardware platforms,
personally, as i spend more time in industry, i become increasingly agnostic: i don't care if it's linux, os x, solaris, windows, vxworks, etc. — if it's the right tool for the job, then that's what i'll use. which means os x at home, linux for work, and windows for administrivia, time sheets, presentations, etc. in my case.
Now, I'm not saying the iSeries is bad. Given infinite money, it probably makes a lot of sense for a lot of problem sets. I just can't imagine recommending one for any of the applications I've ever been involved with.
It kills me to say this, but without knowing more of the specifics I'd probably recommend the Windows boxen - or, more likely, a cluster of them. There's more than one way to get the kind of reliability you can squeeze from an AS/400, and most of them are a lot cheaper.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Micrsoft's ERP products for manufacturing are second to none
Huh??? Microsoft is a wannabe in the serious ERP market - but regardless of software vendor, if you're considering the platform question, it becomes a matter of scale. If you need rock-solid reliability, high-volume throughput and widespread realtime access to the data and application, then the iSeries is the obvious choice.
Just as an example, I'm currently the IT project lead on an ERP installation. The ERP itself can run on a number of different platforms, of which we're going with the iSeries. Their collaborative gateway package runs on Windows, but our order volumes made their techies soil their shorts, so we're going with an alternative (iSeries-based) solution for that part.
If the situation here is for a low order-volume, low user base or other smaller scenario (say, for a niche manufacturer of high-dollar, low volume product), then maybe Windows becomes an affordable option. But if they've already got iSeries inhouse (both the hardware and the support staff), then they probably need that level of stability.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
AS/400's are some of the lowest TCO systems on the planet. My wife worked at a place that used an AS/400 system bought in 1989... when she told me about it I laughed, until we realized that the machine had nearly a decade of uptime with about 30 users hitting it every day and no IT staff of any kind.
The machine eventually had to be rebooted when a hard disk died and the machine phoned home... an IBM guy showed up to replace it and nobody knew that there was a problem.
The system was replaced about 18 months ago (because spare parts were no longer available) by an Windows/Oracle system that is complete garbage. Bugs in the IBM eSeries lights-out-management card caused the system to reboot every 60 minutes. Things like restoring backups are also much more complicated and error prone. (On the AS/400, restoring the system from bare metal required you to insert the tape into the drive and holding down a function key)
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
First of all, that guy who's recommending switching to Windows? Ignore his advice about everything (IT or otherwise), he's clearly uninformed, or a moron, or both.
The AS/400 (iSeries/i5) is going to do a lot more for you in the long run, with less (no) downtime and far fewer headaches involving security, and things like virii and spyware are a complete non-issue. The new boxes are even better, with the ability to run virtual machines in just about any environment you decide to experiment with, while still running those legacy apps like a champ. If there's any down side at all, it may be harder to find expertise, depending on your area of the world, since it's a low volume machine. But when you do find someone, they'll probably know a lot more than just the AS/400 and bring a lot of other real world experience with them.
What the hell are you doing choosing ERP software for your company?
I'm in a similar position, my current employer is evaluating ERP packages and then I'll get told which one we're going to. We currently run BPCS on AS/400 (iSeries). We're probably going to SAP on AIX using DB/2.
As a dev I don't get to make business decisions. I get to do the tech stuff my employer deems suitable.
As for this Windows/Unix/iSeries question, it should not be yours to make. Your job is to make what they buy work reliably. If can't or don't want to do the job then find another one pronto.
Bill Gates even learned the lesson about screwing up an environment a while back whe he gave the order to replace Microsoft's 23 AS/400's with Wintel servers. He ended up with an environment of 1,250 servers that were still not as scalable as the 23 AS/400 machines. Eventually, they killed the project. In order to avoid being teased about owning AS/400's, Bill created a new company. He sold the AS/400's to the new company. He fired all of the AS/400 people working in that department, and hired them at the new company. Finally, he "outsourced" the AS/400 functions to the new company. Oh, and Microsoft threatened to sue IBM if their people ever repeated this information in public. Nope, I don't work for IBM, but I do make my living working with the iSeries product line. I don't need to go anywhere else, because IBM keeps coming up with enhancements that keep drawing customers to the platform. By the way, there are lots of ERP solutions that run on this system. Plus, it can have partitions that run guest operating systems, including the products from Microsoft.
I've worked with AS/400s quite a bit in the past, and in my experience the damn things
are wicked stable and reliable. You almost can't destroy the things... One place I used to work
had an S/38 (the precursor to the AS/400) that was friggin' ancient and still hummed along like
a champ day in and day out... until we upgraded it to a more modern AS/400. If you could
find the old one in the junkyard still, I bet you could plug it in and IPL it today.
Anyway, with the newer iSeries, it's not like you're locked into some obscure technology
platform if IBM ever decides to kill off OS/400. The newer ones will run Linux
which gives you a nice migration / upgrade path. In fact, you might be well served
to start out running Linux on something, whether or not it's an iSeries... then if your
needs change you can scale up, down or horizontally with much greater ease than if you
had to switch operating systems to switch to a different hardware platform.
With Linux you might have to recompile everything, but it's still just Linux.
Just imagine, you start with Linux on xSeries (x86 boxes), and from there you
can scale horizontally by clustering, and/or scale up to an iSeries or pSeries
or OpenPower box, and ultimately you can scale all the way to a zSeries (mainframe). All without
changing your operating system. That's a pretty strong story, and I'm pretty sure it's
one main reason IBM is pushing Linux so hard.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig