Finding Replacements for EOL’d Ecommerce App for JD Edwards
May 22, 2024 Alex Woodie
Fiserv is no longer selling or supporting ERP2Web, an ecommerce product used in JD Edwards environments. Companies have several options for replacements, including open source ecommerce applications like Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) running in the cloud, which is the path recommended by Briteskies.
ERP2Web is an ecommerce product from Fiserv designed to extend JD Edwards ERP systems with B2B capabilities around order entry, order management, product catalog, item availability, pricing, tax information, shipping, and sales order inquiries, among other capabilities.
Earlier this year, Fiserv announced that it was ending support for ERP2Web, it obtained with its $22 billion acquisition of First Data Corp. in 2019. First Data had acquired ERP2Web at some point from CDI Technology of Aurora, Illinois, which appears to be the original developer.
The product was no longer strategic to Fiserv, which develops an IBM i-based core banking application among other products for financial institutions, and so the Brookfield, Wisconsin, financial software developer announced its end of life (EOL) earlier this year. Fiserv will support it for a few more months, then customers are on their own.
“ERP2Web is leveraged by a small number of clients, and we are working with each on a go-forward technology path to meet their needs,” Ann Cave, Fiserv’s senior vice president of external communications, told IT Jungle via email.
One potential replacement for ERP2Web is Adobe Commerce, an open source ecommerce application that was formerly called Magento. Adobe Commerce offers a full array of ecommerce capabilities, and is in the Leaders Quadrant in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce for 2023.
Bill Onion, the managing director of Briteskies, is eager to work with ERP2Web customers that need to transition to another product. In Briteskies’ case, that would be Adobe Commerce, which the Cleaveland, Ohio company has built a line of business around.
“We’ve seen an uptick in activity on the inbound side for us to say, hey, we’re going to need to replace our ERP2Web platform,” Onion said. “If they’re on JD Edwards, I would say we’re interested in talking to them.”
Adobe Commerce provides an intuitive and easy-to-use environment that’s tailored to enabling business users to manage the ecommerce site, Onion said. Other ecommerce applications aren’t as simple for business folks to use, and require more hand-holding by IT.
“Where it smokes a lot of other ecommerce applications, especially these bolt-ons, are the ease of use for the business user to manage the site and the marketing capabilities,” he said. “It’s a much more robust platform for folks to build their ecom presence and to market and sell to their customers and prospects.”
Briteskies has performed many Adobe Commerce and Magento implementations over the years for its JD Edwards customer base. While there is an option to run Adobe Commerce on-prem, most customers choose to use the cloud because it’s easier that way, Onion said.
“Adobe will set up an instance for somebody. It’s kind of like setting up an instance of an ERP system. That’s great, but now you’ve got to make it work for that particular company, so we tweak and arrange and configure, and build integrations to their ERP system,” Onion said.
“It’s as easy as any other integration project, which means if you’ve never done it before it’s really damn hard,” he continued. “But once you know what you’re doing, it’s pretty straightforward.”
Adobe Commerce exposes a full set of APIs that make the integration somewhat easier. Customers also need an API management product on the IBM i side, which Briteskies will often use Eradani or Scott Klement’s tool for, Onion said.
“Setting up an ecom site, it’s like anything else,” he said. “The first time you do an ERP implementation, man you might get your ass kicked a little bit. But the second, third, and fourth time, you get better at that. I look at it the same way as an ecommerce implementation. There’s a lot of moving parts there, a lot of things that you get yourself in trouble, so I’m a believer in getting some outside help the first time.”
In addition to implementing Adobe Commerce, Briteskies provides other technical services aimed at JD Edwards shops. It also provides IBM i security checks. For more info, check out www.briteskies.com.
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