New J.D. Edwards Bundles Cut iSeries ERP Install Times in Half

by Alex Woodie

OS/400 ERP giant J.D. Edwards & Company last week announced it will be delivering a series of application bundles that can be up and running on iSeries servers in half the time it normally takes. J.D. Edwards says the three new bundles for manufacturing, distribution, and financial operations will include "business process templates" that provide preconfigured technical setup support for the company's latest J.D. Edwards 5 suite of software on iSeries servers. The new modules are slated to ship in March.

Deploying ERP applications is often difficult for midmarket companies because of a lack of resources, says Les Wyatt, J.D. Edwards' senior vice president and chief marketing officer. "The new J.D. Edwards 5 solution bundles for iSeries work the way our customers want them to work," he says. "They can be installed in nearly half the time, with preconfigured technical setups that eliminate configuration errors."

The preconfigured bundles will include J.D. Edwards' Supply Chain Management (SCM) application for distributors and J.D Edwards' ERP 8.0 software for companies requiring software to help manage their manufacturing and financial operations. The bundled solution also comes with tailored consulting and education services to help companies get up and running as quickly as possible.

Ease of use has always been an OS/400 server trademark, and last year J.D. Edwards made moves that show it's interested in playing the "keep it simple, stupid" card as well. First, last spring, J.D. Edwards announced its next-generation product suite, J.D. Edwards 5, which does not deliver any wholesale technology changes, compared with the company's previous product suite, OneWorld, but instead delivers the groundwork--a new XML underpinning--that allows its various applications, including ERP, SCM, and CRM components, to work together more harmoniously. Then, in the fall, the Denver company announced it would be standardizing on IBM middleware, including WebSphere application server, DB2 database management system, Lotus collaboration software, and Tivoli systems management software.

By standardizing its own software on IBM's middleware stack (and selling IBM's software via an OEM agreement), J.D. Edwards is eliminating much of the time and money it previously spent in integrating, testing, and building best-practice implementation schemes for a variety of different middleware components. That J.D. Edwards chose to offer a bundled solution for the iSeries is not a surprise, considering that about 65 percent of J.D. Edwards' installed base of 6,500 is running on OS/400 servers (and many are still on WorldSoftware). In its announcement last week, the company said to expect more pre-bundled offerings for additional platforms in the future.

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