Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

Geac Computer last week took the wraps off System21 Aurora, the next generation of its OS/400-based ERP system. With new RPG IV source, a closer integration with WebSphere, a new thin-client interface, and an integrated business process modeler, System21 Aurora is prepared to help manufacturers and distributors get more from their systems and to connect more easily with trading partners, Geac says. The redevelopment effort is Geac's largest investment in System21 in several years--reportedly more than $15 million over the last 12 months.

As the market for ERP software matured, sales of new software licenses tapered off, and many midmarket ERP software vendors slowed down the investments they were making in R&D or stopped enhancements almost entirely. As one of the more successful ERP systems on the OS/400 platform, with an estimated 1,600 users--concentrated in the conservative food and beverage, apparel and textiles, and consumer goods industries--System21 has only recently been enhanced to include the type of Web and e-business functionality that other top-line midmarket ERP suites were getting.

In the fall of 2001, Geac, which purchased the System21 line from British software firm JBA Software in 1999, began offering e-business enhancements for System21 through its commerce.connect extension suite and strategy. The commerce.connect suite consists of more than 10 add-on modules for activities such as purchasing, supplier management, online sales, call centers, and customer service. In many ways, System21 Aurora, which is the follow-on to System21 Version 3.52 SP 4, is an extension of the types of enhancements that commerce.connect brought to the system; in fact, System21 Aurora enhancements are based on commerce.platform, a component of the commerce.connect suite.

In any event, Geac is billing the release of System21 Aurora as the biggest thing to happen to the ERP suite in recent memory. "Innovations and development of System21 Aurora represents our largest investment and delivery of new functionality in System21 in several years," said Paul Birch, president and chief executive of Geac. "System21 Aurora can help organizations improve business at the core process level, thus boosting overall business performance with low risk."

Geac says the new "front-end process-modeling engine" it has delivered with System21 Aurora will give companies the ability to map out key operational processes, to streamline them, and then to activate them to become live business flows of activities and data. When the system requires manual intervention, the software will automatically alert personnel.

There is also a new Order Capture application available with this release. This enhancement ensures customer service representatives have full visibility into their customers' recent sales and order activities, which increases sales opportunities (and ensures the customer leaves the interaction satisfied as well). Geac says Order Capture transcends boundaries, allowing customer service reps to check the status of an order regardless of how it was placed (whether by EDI, XML, phone, or e-mail), and provides real-time access to order information originating from applications of multiple-company operations.

System21 Aurora also includes a new demand planning capability that is intended to ensure suitable stock levels are available to satisfy fluctuating demand. It also ships with new enterprise-wide functionality that, Geac says, ensures high levels of fulfillment, scaling from single plant floors to multi-national supply chain networks.

Geac is delivering a richer and more colorful experience to users through its thin-client Web-based interface. This thin-client interface, which Geac refers to as its "workspace," is based on IBM WebSphere technology and basically functions as a portal. Users can set up their interfaces to provide quick access to the needed ERP components, and to inform them of pertinent news about their company, or even the System21 Aurora software product. The WebSphere-based "workspace" server can reside either on a Windows 2000 Server or on an iSeries server at OS/400 V5R1; it does not have to be the same iSeries server where the primary System21 Aurora applications reside.

Customers better suited to green-screen interfaces will be able to deploy the 5250 on dumb terminals or terminal emulation software. They can even deploy the 5250 screens in conjunction with the new thin clients, at the same time.

While the new features and interface are worthy additions, what makes System21 Aurora a major release is the fact that Geac has converted--or rewritten, as the case may be--the application's RPG III source code to RPG IV. This has several repercussions, mostly good but some bad. On the good side, moving to the more modern RPG IV allows the application developers to take advantage of more sophisticated programming techniques, and allows the core ERP application to more closely integrate with WebSphere and Enterprise Java, which Geac is increasingly relying on to deliver new functionality and write its interfaces.

But the evolutionary RPG IV rewrite will also claim its victims. For customers that have made modifications to their System21 applications, upgrading to the ILE RPG-based System21 Aurora will entail a lot of additional work. Such is the case at Rexair, a Troy, Michigan, manufacturer of vacuum cleaners. Rexair has made extensive modifications to its System21-based order entry system, according to its IS project manager, Steve Prill, which will make the move to System21 Aurora difficult, if not entirely out of the question. The company is considering whether to adapt to the changes or drop maintenance entirely.

More information about System21 Aurora will be presented next month at the North American launch, at Geac's annual user conference, called Alliance, in Orlando, Florida, from May 11 to May 14.

This article has been corrected since its was first published. The sentence "The company is considering whether to adapt to the changes or ditch the system entirely" has been replaced with the sentence "The company is considering whether to adapt to the changes or drop maintenance entirely." Guild Companies regrets the error. [Correction made 4/11/03.]