Lawson Signs Five Companies to M3 Contracts

April 24, 2007 Alex Woodie

Lawson Software announced five new M3 customers last week, including European companies Enia Carpet Group, Bygma, Johannes Fog, and Plus Orthopedics, and Guatemala-based Koramsa. The new contracts were signed during the company’s third quarter, which ended February 28.

Enia Carpet Group is a €190 million (about $250 million) Swiss manufacturer of flooring materials, including paper, steel, textile, foil, and high-quality residential and commercial carpeting. The company will replace an existing ERP system with M3, a Java-based ERP system that is traditionally, but not always, run on an IBM iSeries server. Enia’s initial plans call for installing M3 at its facilities in France, Spain, and England. By the end of 2009, the company, which employs more than 1,300 people around the world, hopes to have M3 implemented in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Serbia, and the Ukraine.

Also choosing M3 were Bygma and Johannes Fog, two leading players in the building material and lumber industries in Denmark. While separate companies, Bygma and Johannes Fog had similar needs–they’ve both grown through acquisition in recent years, and together own more than 60 businesses in Denmark and Sweden–so they worked together to obtain new ERP systems. Plans call for Bygma, the larger of the two companies, to go live on M3 by this fall, while Johannes Fog is aiming to be fully operational on M3 by 2008.

Another new M3 customer is Plus Orthopedics, a Swiss manufacturer of implants for the hips, knees, shoulders, spine, feet, and other body parts. Plus Orthopedics had been a customer of Intentia’s since 1999, and following the merger of Intentia with Lawson, decided to move forward with the upgrade from the RPG-based Movex suite to the Java-based M3 suite. The company, which employs about 900 people, has been live on M3 at its Switzerland sites, and plans to roll-out M3 next in its Italian subsidiaries, with offices in other countries to follow.

The final new M3 customers announced, Koramsa, Guatemala’s largest apparel manufacturer, has signed an agreement to implement QuickStep Fashion, a pre-configured ERP package, based on M3, designed specifically for the apparel business. In addition to QuickStep Fashion, Koramsa will implement several M3 applications, including enterprise mobility, supply chain planner, and Multi-Site Planner; a business intelligence package; and Lawson Learning Accelerator.

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Do the Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting for Cost Savings

COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

“Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in general, hosting refers to one of two scenarios. In the first scenario, hosting can refer to a client owned machine that is housed in a co-location facility (commonly called a co-lo for short) where the data center provides traditional system administrator services, relieving the client of administrative and operational responsibilities. In the second scenario, hosting can refer to an MSP owned machine in which partition resources are provided to the client in an on-demand capacity. This scenario allows the client to completely outsource all aspects of Power Systems hardware and the IBM i operating system and database.

The scenario that is best for each business depends on a number of factors and is largely up for debate. In most cases, pursuing hosting purely as a cost saving strategy is a dead end. Furthermore, when you consider all of the costs associated with maintaining and IBM i environment, it is typically not a cost-effective option for the small to midsize market. The most cost-effective approach for these organizations is often a combination of a client owned and maintained system (either on-prem or in a co-lo) with cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Only in some cases of larger enterprise companies can a hosting strategy start to become a potentially cost-effective option.

However, cost savings is just one part of the story. As IBM i expertise becomes scarce and IT resources run tight, the only option for some firms may be to pursue hosting in some capacity. Whatever the driving force for pursing hosting may be, the key point is that it is not just simply an option for running your workload in a different location. There are many details to consider and it is to the best interest of the client to work with an experienced MSP in weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each option. As COVID-19 rolls on, time will tell if IBM i hosting strategies will follow the other strong business trends of the pandemic.

When we say do the math in the title above, it literally means that you need to do the math for your particular scenario. It is not about us doing the math for you, making a case for either staying on premises or for moving to the cloud. There is not one answer, but just different levels of cost to be reckoned which yield different answers. Most IBM i shops have fairly static workloads, at least measured against the larger mix of stuff on the public clouds of the world. How do you measure the value of controlling your own IT fate? That will only be fully recognized at the moment when it is sorely missed the most.

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