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Lawson 9 Provides a Stepping Stone to Landmark
Published: December 5, 2006
by Alex Woodie
Lawson Software last week announced the general availability of Lawson 9 for i5/OS, the first new version of the software company's RPG-based ERP suite in almost five years. In addition to the new application capabilities, what's significant about this release is that it begins the technological transition of Lawson's i5/OS software and customers to "Landmark," the company's next-generation series of Java-based, multiplatform ERP applications.
Lawson, which has been developing RPG-based business software for the IBM midrange platform since the late 1970s, unveiled plans for its Landmark applications about 19 months ago at its annual user conference in San Diego. Like many mid market ERP developers these days, Lawson's Landmark plans are designed to simplify its own operations by eliminating the separate development efforts for i5/OS, Unix, and Windows platforms, provide a pathway to service oriented architecture (SOA), and streamline the maintenance processes for its own customers with a vast reduction in code.
The transition to Landmark on the i5/OS platform begins with Lawson 9, which is also now known as S3, a reference to "staff, source, and serve." With this release, Lawson has, for the first time, formally split its S3 technology environment, which it now calls the Lawson System Foundation, from the applications themselves, and this is where the biggest advances toward Landmark have been made.
Lawson System Foundation
Lawson System Foundation 9 moves toward Landmark by including an OEM copy of WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment (ND). With IBM's multiserver version of WAS for i5/OS, Lawson has obtained a solid middleware platform on which to base the series of SOA applications that Landmark will eventually entail.
"Lawson System Foundation 9 provides the first step to getting there [Landmark]," says Ken Munson, Lawson's marketing director for government, education, and technology. "Getting folks up on IBM middleware is a critical factor, although there are also key capabilities in Lawson System Foundation and the applications."
WAS ND replaces proprietary technology Lawson previously used in its unnamed technology environment, and provides the underlying technology for enabling enterprise service busses (ESBs) and business process management (BPM) in Lawson applications, Munson says. "We felt very strongly that IBM's implementation of the middleware would provide the best infrastructure," he says. "We're using the world's leading middleware layer."
In addition to WAS ND, Lawson System Foundation 9 also includes optional components like IBM's Tivoli Directory Server, which is used for enabling single sign-on (SSO) and role-based access to applications, Munson says. "Those kinds of features are going to be key to moving to Landmark applications," he says.
Journey to Landmark
While there are currently no Landmark applications for i5/OS, the Lawson System Foundation can enable iSeries customers to take advantage of the few Landmark applications developed for other platforms.
"Lets say, for the sake of argument, if an iSeries customer is up to Lawson 9 and LSF 9, they do have the option of adopting some applications not supported on System i," such as the new budgeting and planning application made available for Windows earlier this year, Munson says. "Some of the things we've done can allow for the elegant co-existence" of applications developed with different technologies.
In the meantime, Lawson's iSeries and System i customers can take advantage of the new crop of S3 applications that Lawson 9 introduces.
On the BI front, version 9 brings improvements to the way people access business performance data, including new "view time" security capabilities to restrict the availability of reports and new report-bursting capabilities. More information is now available in the employee and manager self-service component, while the absence management and position management components have also been enhanced.
Lawson's supply chain management software now brings new "procurement cards" that are designed to streamline the purchasing processes by enabling employees to use credit cards for purchasing, rather than formal requisition and purchase order processes. Using credit cards in this way can help maximize rebates and reduce the time and money required in traditional purchasing processes.
Version 9 also brings enhancements to Lawson's enterprise financial management applications, including new collaborative and auditable budgeting practices, the optimization of grant-based revenues in Lawson's grant management component, new financial management and reporting capabilities in the deductions management component, new fraud prevention capabilities in the cash management application, and new allocation features in Lawson's "strategic ledger" module.
No Impact on M3-Movex
Despite the desire to reduce disparate code sets and simplify development and maintenance of its applications through Landmark, the Lawson System Foundation has nothing to do with the RPG- and Java-based M3, or "make, move, and maintain" (formerly Movex) applications that Lawson obtained in its merger with Intentia earlier this year, according to Munson.
What's more, there are no plans to co-mingle any of the S3 and M3 technologies, even though Intentia had re-developed Movex in Java.
"They are still technically separate. M3 has its own system foundation," Munson says. "Making public commitments to unify them on a single technical foundation is not really part of our plan. It's not our plan to take these different applications that are very deep …. that's going to dilute the vale of the offerings."
Customers can move directly, or via "skip upgrades," to Lawson 9 from either the Lawson 7x or Lawson 8x applications, Munson says. Lawson 9 supports i5/OS V5R3 and V5R4. For more information, visit www.lawosn.com.
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