Sorry to make another thread about this but I need an asnwer quickly and ...

OKay so we're on Windows 8.0.3.6 now with BSI 7

We (my client) are coming off of Lawson by next March and going to SAP (total mistake but what do I know)

I talked to BSI and they said they'd support us till year-end on 7 and also provide us with any year-end related updates.

To upgrade to BSI 8, we have to upgrade the Env to 8.0.3.7 and apply about 8 patches total. We have two servers and one other disaster recovery server. Things take a lot of planng :wwf: here so we'd rather not do anything and just wait till we don't have to use Lawson any more.

My question is, would you upgrade BSI in our situation? Do you think there is any risk with going unsupported for around 3 months?

There is always the risk that the SAP implementatino won'tget done in time for March and we'll be in July before it's done. :rolleyes:

Hi Tan - I tend to be a risk taker, and you've already identified your biggest risk - the fact that you may not go live on time. The biggest plus is that BSI has said that they'll provide year end updates, which is when the biggest tax update is (although I know there are updates from BSI almost hourly, it seems).

When the decommission date was 9/30, we were in the same predicament, and we were going to opt to pay BSI a ridiculous ransom to support us through the end of the year, because they were NOT offering updates for v7 year end according to our contact. If you're stable and will definitely be leaving Lawson :angry: at this client, personally, I'd opt to take the risk. Of course, I'm not getting my paycheck from you, either.... :P

Tan -- If BSI will be issuing the 2008 tax tables before they decommission 7, you might be okay... depending on how many state and local entities have to be maintained. Scan the Jan-March 2007 updates to see what pertained to this client and you'll get a better idea of what to expect for 2008.

Hope this helps,
Geri

Thank you guys for the quick replies.

Hey SAH, how much did BSI quote you for ongoing support anyway? Did it sound like it was tailored towards you guys or just some standard number they had around for continuing support?

Thanks

We were quoted a little more than 4500 PER WEEK for support from BSI - I'm not thinking it was necessarily tailored to us per say, but possibly based on some formula with number of states (we're all 50) or something relating to licensing or whatever - we initially thought the amount was for the entire period (aren't we silly)

:o $4500 is outrageous considering you probably won't make a single call to them! SHeesh. But in a way that's a good point for me to argue. I personally think we should do the upgrade now. We made a list of risks and opportunities:

Opportunities
The following opportunities are associated with upgrading to version 8:

- Continued support from BSI and Lawson, keep in mind that Lawson will not support any BSI related issues if upgrade does not take place after 12/31. An HR/PR issue may or may not be related to BSI but maybe part of the trac Lawson follows to support the issue, in which case they'll require an upgrade to 8 before resolving the support ticket.
- Since the upgrade to BSI 8 requires several Lawson patches, we'd very likely not apply those critical patches to Lawson if we stayed with BSI 7 even though a large majority of what the patches address are Lawson related and not necessarily BSI. In other words, we'd bring our Lawson installation up to date
- In the unlikely event that decommissioning Lawson takes longer than anticipated, we'd have covered our bases with regards to support
- We currently have the necessary resources to perform this upgrade whereas in the future that opportunity may or may not exist
- All patches and upgrades would take place on Test server first to ensure a successful upgrade on production
- The luxury to plan the upgrade vs. a hurried upgrade at a later time in case it becomes necessary

Risks
The following risks are associated with upgrading to version 8

- Down time required on Lawson servers
- Resources required for Lawson patch and BSI upgrade work
- The small possibility that the upgrade is unsuccessful in which case we'd revert to previous day's backup.

The BSI upgrade wasn't as bad as I expected - their instructions suck though on the database portion and getting the base data.

But you are going to need time to test that Upgrade to ESP7. Especially if you have to upgrade everything else with, i.e. Web, processflow, edi, etc. I upgraded to ESP7 earlier this year and it did take some time but went a lot better then I expected.

We are probably moving ahead with BSI8 to production this weekend.