K.Lund Offshore Taps Lawson for Rental ERP

May 19, 2009 Alex Woodie

K.Lund Offshore, a Norwegian company that rents equipment to oil and gas operations, will install and run Lawson Software‘s M3 Equipment Service Management and Rental Suite on IBM System i hardware, the application vendor announced last week.

K.Lund Offshore supplies and rents compressors and lifting equipment to the Norwegian and international oil and gas industry. The company is based in Sola, Norway, and also has regional headquarters in Brazil and the Persian Gulf, two of the world’s most active oil and gas producing regions. In 2007, K.Lund employed 50 people and had revenues of €15 million, according to its Web site.

In 2007, K.Lund Offshore embarked upon a business process improvement strategy it called total process management, or TPM. The company also looked for new management software that could help achieve that goal. This is what eventually led to Lawson, which launched the Equipment Service Management and Rental edition of the M3 ERP suite just last fall.

Lawson M3 (formerly Intentia Movex) was a good fit for K.Lund. “One of the reasons we chose the Lawson solution for the oilfield services industry was an initial assessment that demonstrated the solution could provide a 94 percent functional fit for our specified needs,” said Gunnhild Vik, project manager for K.Lund Offshore, in a press release.

Gaute Jorpeland, managing director and co-owner of K.Lund Offshore, says the M3 software could allow the company to save up to 35 percent in its purchasing budget. In addition to Lawson’s industry expertise and functionally rich solution, “We have greatly appreciated their professional and customer friendly way of dealing with us,” Jorpeland added.

The Equipment Service Management and Rental edition of the M3 ERP suite supports business processes that are specific to this industry, including sales, claims and warranty management, rentals and leasing, field service and repairs, and materials service management. Lawson also offers tailored versions of M3 for other industries, including food and beverage, apparel, wholesale distribution, and hospitals.

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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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