Maple Leaf Farms Heralds EXTOL for B2B Connections

June 19, 2007 Alex Woodie

Maple Leaf Farms, the duck farm that was founded in 1958, may a bit old fashioned when it comes to duck recipes. But when it comes to back-office computer systems and B2B connectivity, the Milford, Indiana, company is on the cutting edge, and it gives its B2B software supplier, EXTOL International, much of the credit.

With 1,200 employees working together to sell 16 million ducks per year in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Asia, Maple Leaf Farms has cornered a pretty good chunk of the market for ducks and duck products. Assisting the company in its quest to sell more ducks is VAI‘s S2K ERP suite running on an IBM iSeries Model 810 server.

Before Maple Leaf Farms tapped EXTOL for EDI and B2B software, managing EDI communications with about 100 trading partners took half the time of Ted Gillem, the company’s application support specialist and EDI coordinator. Since then, the company has implemented several EXTOL products–including the EXTOL Integrator, Secure, and Portal products–which has boosted automation and reduced the amount of time Gillem spends managing EDI.

“One of our larger retail customers told me Maple Leaf Farms is ‘light years ahead’ of their other suppliers when it comes to EDI,” Gillem says. “This is because we use EXTOL for business integration.”

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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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Article featured in IT Jungle on April 5, 2021