Reader Feedback On Third Party’s A Charm For JDE Maintenance Contracts

April 30, 2012 Hey, Dan

There’s another issue with going to third-party maintenance for JDE World: operating system upgrades.

We looked at dropping World A7.3 maintenance a few years ago. We found out, however, that if we ever wanted to upgrade from i5/OS V5R4 to IBM i 6.1, we needed Oracle to provide us with the proper updated objects so we could run on the new OS. Oracle/JDE was only willing to do that if we stayed on maintenance. And oh, by the way, there is a significant penalty if you get off maintenance and get back on again.

So from my point of view, third-party JDE maintenance is great if you’re not planning on ever doing anything with that system again. But if you expect to go to i 6.1 or 7.1 for new hardware to handle increased transactions, you’re stuck with Oracle. Either you pay them or you don’t upgrade software and hardware.

–Name Withheld On Request

Thanks for the email. This is interesting stuff. Like I said, JDE tends to get a lot of attention, but there are lots of companies in similar dilemmas.

So how long do you plan on staying with A7.3? Have you so highly customized it that making the jump to A9.3–with all the program conversion crap–is a huge obstacle?

The guy at Spinnaker says he expects quite a few shops to move from A7.35 to A9.3, then drop Oracle maintenance, switch to third-party maintenance, and start making a plan for getting off JDE in about five years. As he puts it, the money saved in maintenance (Oracle versus a third party) will go a long way toward buying the JDE replacement in five years.

–Dan

We’re looking at alternatives right now, but management is being tight-lipped about it. We may be loading up JDE E3 on a 7.1 partition fairly soon for evaluation, so I’m looking forward to that.

Now that I’ve had a few days to think about it, your comment about moving to A9.3 makes sense but I’m not sure my shop will do it. As you said, we’re so loaded down with customization, I’m not sure how they roll it back to make the move.

I should hear something on the JDE E3 install early next week.

Thanks.

–Name Withheld On Request

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