Windows Trumps IBM i for Trucking Software Upgrade at C.R. England

August 10, 2010 Alex Woodie

The C.R. England trucking company will power down its System i servers in the near future, as the 90-year-old firm adopts new transportation and asset management systems based on the Windows operating system, the company’s application provider, TMW Systems, announced last week.

All five asset-based operating divisions of C.R. England will transition from IBM i-based systems to Windows-based systems as part of an IT overhaul at the Salt Lake City, Utah, company, TMW says.

“We’ve benefited for years from the reliability and flexibility of our AS/400 system, but felt it was the right time for us to move to a Windows platform, in order to meet future growth and development goals,” stated Chad England, president of C.R. England North America, in a press release.

C.R. England had been a customer of Innovative Computing Corporation (ICC), which Cleveland, Ohio-based TMW acquired in December 2009. ICC had some difficulty in getting a major refresh of its IES product, called Release 9, into the hands of its customers. TMW announced the general availability of IES Release 9, which was upgraded to ILE RPG from RPG 3, in June, more than a year later than ICC had originally promised.

The decision was made in late 2009 that further investment in IBM i technology “did not fit the company’s long-term strategy,” TMW says of C.R. England. The company looked for a Windows-based product to replace it, and decided to stick with TMW Systems. The company plans to adopt the TMWSuite and TMT Fleet products to run its national, Mexico, dedicated, regional, and intermodal divisions.

TMW sells multiple Windows- and IBM i-based ERP systems for trucking outfits, including the Windows-based TMW Suite and TruckMate, and the IBM i-based IES and TL2000 suites. While the biggest trucking firms have long favored the AS/400-based systems, TMW has been pushing and positioning its Windows-based products as a suitably stable and scalable platform for its largest customers.

C.R. England is considered one of the largest privately owned trucking companies in the country. The company, which had $500 million in revenue in 2005, owns 3,600 tractors and more than 5,600 trailers, and employs more than 4,600 drivers and independent contractors.