Hi,

I'm new to Lawson products and am interested in peoples overall views of the Lawson technology architecture and associated levels of confidence based on past experience and future planning. This does not include the functionality regarding the applications.

Kind Regards,

AM.

I've had extensive access to the 8.1/9.0 technology and I must say that it is extremely solid. Having worked with Lawson tech since "Universe 2.0" I can tell you that 9.0 is a real departure from what we've grown used to. You can pretty much forget what you know and be prepared to learn new concepts and technologies.

Coming from you Dave that means a lot. How much would you say there is to learn and whats the learning curve like? Are there good classes yet or would you give it time before spending money on training? Whats the performance like?

This is not an "Official Lawson Reply". The learning curve is rather steep, but certainly attainable. You'll need to understand some of the new technologies in order to do effective troubleshooting. Think of the time you put into learning Apache and Tomcat - well the same applies now to WebSphere, LDAP, Bouncy Castle, etc...

Plus you have the new Security. The new model is EXTREMELY powerful, but with that power comes complexity. I've had some of the internal training courses which have been pretty good, and I understand IBM is teaming with Lawson to present classes on their middleware products.

Resources.. I'd plan on moving to a new machine or at least adding processors if moving to 9.0. The new tech gives you a lot of options but it costs you some horsepower to get them. If you've ever compiled a productline on 8.0.X you'll FREAK when you do the same on 9.0 - since GEN is now scattered between LDAP and your RDBMS, compiles are not NEARLY as fast. Patience is a virtue.

This may sound like I'm not happy with 9.0, which is not at all the case. It has some wonderful aspects, the new Portal is excellent! The combination of ProcessFlow into the base install is a godsend, and making BCI and PFlow work together is an EXTREMELY powerful tool for automating the flow of data into/out of 3rd party systems. I've already mentioned to new security, which is highly granular.

Let me know if I mised anything.

If you knew absolutely nothing about 9.0 but had been using Lawson for roughly 5 years (7.3.3 env -> 8.0.3 env) and were a reasonably fast learner, how long do you think it would take to comfortably implement 9.0 including Lawson security (with assistance of consultants) and be able to support it after implementation? Is your confidence in 9.0 such that you think it could be done within a month or so? I'm sure installing the software and a very simple security model can be done, but what about supporting it?

apps 8.0.3 (msp 10)
env 8.0.3 (esp 5)
ios 8.0.3
portal 3.1.5
win 2003
SQL 2000

Thanks,
Brenda

That's a very good question Brenda - No.

:lol:

But you've got 5 years of Lawson experience and it looks like you have most of the tpys, so you CAN be well on your way in a month - in a TEST environment - depending of course on:

A: your real learning ability

B: the amount of time you can actually spend with the consultant

C: The quality of your consultant and their knowledge sharing capability

D: Your own advance work understanding WebSphere, LDAP and Bouncy Castle

E: Whether you have taken the Lawson Security Administration course - but remember that you can start your users on LAUA and migrate them individually or in groups to LASE (Lawson Security Engine)

The installation will probably take 2 weeks, then data migration, security setup) and your install consultant is NOT going to be a security guru), etc.. So you can see how a month is just NOT going to happen. 2.. maybe...

Selling 9,0 to management: I need to sell upper management on going to 9.0 vs going to a different ERP system. The user community here has come mainly from SAP / Oracle shops and they're all in our CFO's ear trying to get rid of Lawson. Do you have any suggestions on the great 9.0 features that would impress a CFO?

Thanks!

LawsonTech,

What industry are you in? Some of the new bolt-on products from Lawson can be very enticing.

LawsonTech:

Currently I'm commuting in the horrid Massachusetts traffic with a good friend who's an SAP programmer/analyst. We share horror stories.

Here's what you can tell your CFO: SAP is wonderful. But you pay for what you get. Not only is it 4 to 10 times more expensive, but also, it is 4 to 10 times more complex. You can do any amount of customizing on SAP, but -- everything is table-driven. Data is tables. Menus are tables. Programs are tables. Everything is a table. Expect to hire 4 times more programmer/analysts to handle an SAP installation. Expect to pay them more. Expect to spend many months on implementation.

At a prior company, we burned through a half-million bucks just preparing for an SAP install. Then they cancelled the project. After that fiasco, we eventually moved to Lawson and spent a whole lot less. Plus, instead of a team of over 10 programmer/analysts, we had a team of 5 -- one of whom was my Massachusetts friend who worked with me to convert SAP data. After others left and I was let go, they're down to 2 full-time p/a's.

My current employer has basically 2 full-time p/a equivalents. I'm a Lawson-trained guy (1 p/a equivalent); the boss is also very good with Lawson (0.5 p/a equivalent); and the DBA interfaces to the Lawson data (0.5 p/a equivalent). That's seems to be about the median for most Lawson shops.

SAP shops usually have a lot more p/a's on staff. I don't know the exact number, but my guess is that it's quite a bit higher.

That's my take on it. I hope that this helps.

Agreed to Milo on all the points.
Having worked from 8.0.x to 9.x with Lawson & knowing its strength & weakness I can compilment well about Lawson.
Not sure about SAP, but know very well that its available world wide, supports many many functionalities, accounting principles, tax calculations etc, which are yet to come for Lawson.
Compared with SAP, my perspective is that, Lawson is technologically stronger, functionality wise weak.

With the integration that's happening since Lawson's merger with Intensia and it's drive to become an international solution, you'll see a huge jump in functionality. Lawson is now focused on meeting requirements for deployment in Asia/pacific, Europe and the Middle East as well as the Americas.

Milo's comment about the halted SAP deployment reminded me of a conversation I had not too long ago with an SAP consultant that I fly with occasionally. He had just left a deployment that was halted in mid-stream because of cost overruns (WAY OVER) and told me that "About 65% of our SAP implementations fail for some reason.."

I was amazed.. I've never heard of but one Lawson implementation that pulled the plug, and that was due to poor local project management.

WOW...that's a big news man. Thanks. I sincerely appreciate you. Now I can pull my both collars up, keep my neck straight & walk!!!

I've been asked to research the Migration experience of other Lawson upgrades, ie 7.x -> 8.x

We are appalled that the upgrade from 8.x ->9.0 will cost 24K. We look at 9.0 as an u/g , not a 'NEW' install.

Has anyone experienced this situation in the past. And, we now find out that if the install isn't 'Blessed' by a Lawson professional that our GSC coverage maybe in doubt. Very distressing.

Please let me know if this is standard operating procedure.

thanks,

Brad

What you're being asked to pay for Brad, is not so much 9.0, but the underlying IBM technology on which 9.0 depends. Lawson only gets a TINY piece of that 24K

I've done SEVERAL 7.x -> 8.x upgrades and have encountered very little that wasn't simple to fix - of course I say that with the caveat that I require my clients to be ACTIVELY involved in the upgrade process, and that they do EXTENSIVE testing and validation before they do it "FOR REAL".

I guess my most difficult was a Unix client on 7.0.3 apps and 7.0.3 env who wanted to ugrade to 8.1 apps on 8.0.3 - it took a while - We had to do 3 environment upgrades and 4 Applications upgrades, but they never lost 1 single scheduled work day.