Spinnaker Solves Payroll Issue for Big JDE World Customer

September 17, 2013 Alex Woodie

A large healthcare provider in the Midwest will be able to keep its payroll system running for the foreseeable future without making major changes to its JD Edwards World ERP software or its IBM i server thanks to software and services provided by Spinnaker Support, the company announced recently.

The unnamed healthcare provider was in a bind. The company, which employs 3,300 across five states, needed to do something with its JD Edwards World payroll system before the end of the year. That’s when two related products–Oracle JD Edwards World A7.3 to A9.2 and the Vertex Payroll Tax L Series (PTL) package–face major support events.

Instead of undertaking a big upgrade project to get onto more current releases of its ERP software and the IBM i OS, the company turned to Spinnaker Support, which developed a product called the Q Series Integrator that will allow customers to connect their older ERP systems to Vertex’s newer Payroll Tax Q Series (PTQ) payroll package.

The healthcare company isn’t the only JDE World shop struggling with the end of mainstream support from Oracle and the end of all support from Vertex for the PTL package, says Matt Stava, managing principal of Spinnaker Support.

“A large percentage of the calls we are receiving have to do with this World Payroll issue,” he says in a press release. “We understand the customer’s frustrations with being forced into an upgrade, so our team has been focused on getting this organization and many others live.”

Oracle is in the midst of a massive effort to get customers running older versions of JDE World to upgrade by the end of the year, when it will end mainstream support for World versions A7.3 and A8.1. Oracle wants these customers to upgrade to A9.3, which includes the new Payroll Tax Q Series (PTQ) product from Vertex. However, A9.3 only runs on IBM i 7.1 and therefore requires another upgrade from i5/OS V5R4.

All those forced upgrades are too much for some customers, which is part of the reason that IBM relented with its planned end of support date for i5/OS V5R4. While Regular Software Maintenance (SWMA) support for V5R4 expires on September 30, IBM in May announced an extended SWMA support offering that allows customers to stay on V5R4 for up to three years.

Spinnaker says it takes about four weeks to fully implement the Q Series Integrator product. The company says it’s sold about 100 instances of the software this year, and expects a big rush during the fourth quarter. “Companies that would like to consider this solution need to act quickly,” Stava says.