With the slated world wide release of Gemini ( Baan VI) on October 7 in NC, US, could we draw some attention to the concerns of the existing baan users who could be divided into two broad categories : users on Baan IV (roughly 80 %)and earlier versions and those on iBaan ERP ( Baan V ) ( balance 20 %)

Would the users of earlier versions who haven't yet upgraded to Baan V, jump 2 steps at a time and upgrade to Gemini as and when it is available or would they consider switching to applications of alternate vendors ?

Also would SSA GT extend the support for Triton and other Baan IV versions for which the standard support ends one or two years down the line ?

it would be a great pleasure to have your valued views / comments on the issues mentioned above

thanking you in anticipation

aditya

thread got stuck in the moderator queue.

I think at least what SSA intends to do with these concerns has been released. As far as I can read into what they say:

1. Neverending support for all versions..? You will have to keep paying more as the years go by, to offset their increased support costs.

2. First migration plan is from Baan IV to Gemini, not Baan V. Hmmm....yep, that's good for Baan IV people. They continue to say that migration will be less painful.

3. Not releasing in October 2003. Now pushed back to Spring? 2004..
reasons? I have heard several:
build a better migration path!
probably better integration to existing SSA products
product was not as far along as they thought

We should know more after BWU, in a week or so.

thanx lbencic

but that leaves the question of some of the existing MANMAN/X users i.e. Triton 2.0 users ( some of whom are quite big ) unanswered.

What would be the likely migration paths for these users and how would they react ? Considering the fact that they are atleast 2 to 3 versions behind, would these users go through the complete evaluation process for their applications ?

Your right, we have not heard about the migration path for those earlier versions, or anything other than Baan IV.

I can say if they do force upgrade to Baan IV, even from 2.0 it will be less painful than the upgrade from Baan IV to Baan V, and people have been doing those upgrades from Triton to Baan IV for years with little fanfair.

Also, the neverending support applies to MANMAN as far as I know, so that should give them some comfort if they are still happy where they are.

As a personal opinion, if they have not upgraded in that many years, you can expect huge differences in the current version, and pain during upgrade. It's the business plan they chose. They can expect any upgrade to be like a new installation. So yes, they would / should consider other packages, but is that a Baan problem? or just expected business practice based on their strategy of never upgrading...?

Originally posted by lbencic
I think at least what SSA intends to do with these concerns has been released. As far as I can read into what they say:

1. Neverending support for all versions..? You will have to keep paying more as the years go by, to offset their increased support costs.

2. First migration plan is from Baan IV to Gemini, not Baan V. Hmmm....yep, that's good for Baan IV people. They continue to say that migration will be less painful.




are there any links / information available on the statements made by SSA about its plans for the existing baan customers ?

thanks in advance

Bader's Link (http://www.baanboard.com/baanboard/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13099&highlight=bader) takes you to the main article - but the related link

Related Link (http://www.vnunet.com/News/1143873)

talks about their support, and I have seen that in a couple places.

I can't find a link that talks about the Baan IV migration first - it may have been info passed to me from the partner contacts. I think after Orlando we can get solid press releases on that - it's just next week, and they plan on releasing a good deal of information (but not the product..)

thanks lbencic

is there any information available as to who are these existing manman users ? ( the rough size of the current installed base since most of them would have migrated to Baan IV or later versions)

are there any big guys amongst them ?

aditya

Hi,

the last information what i got in Germany is, that is planned to discuss with the ManMan an MK Customers to migrate to BAAN IV or BAAN "Gemini".

Tinka

hello Tinka

do u have any information about the size of the installed base of these manman users ? according to me it must not be more than 3 to 4 % of baan's total customer base.

Most of these users are served by smaller vendors like cortlandt software by coming out with solutions which supplement and surround the existing backbone of manman functionality.

Given the fact that these guys haven't migrated to b4 or b5 yet, do u think they will migrate now ?

aditya

Hi,

the first Question is from which kind of Customers you talk about. There will be some ManMan Customer which running on a DEC Hardware. There will be some ManMan/X Customers which running on a Unix Size, and there will be MK Manufacturing Customers.
What i heard ist that there will be round about 200 Customers which a running ManMan and ManMan/X.

This Customers are not only small Customers. I know of Custromer with more than 150 named Users.

The Question is, they are happy with SSA in Past and with there Solution ?? If it is so, than i think the best Opportunity for them is to migrate to a BAAN Version.
We had done in the Past 2 Migrations from ManMan/X an MK Manufacturing to BAAN IV. We migrate to BAAN IV because the difference is very small an the Training for the Users are minimal.

Do you are an ManMan Customer ???

If you have more questions , do not hesitate to Contact me.

Kind Regards

tinka

thanks tinka

no i'm not a manman customer but i know some of the users who are still running applications on manman.

probably what you said makes sense, by the way i thought that manman to Baan IV migration had a remote possibility since i thought there would be huge differences between these two versions and hence it would make sense for these customers to consider other options.

and then there is the case of manman users who run on hp-3000 series too. With HP withdrawing support for its 3000 platform soon, these users would also have to start considering various migration options ..what say ?

aditya

Hi aditya,

i don´t think so taht there will be a huge of differences. Waht we learn on customer side is, that there are a lot of new functionallity in BAAN IV where the ManMan Customers are waitung for. So we had on one Customer Side only 10 Days Training for all Modules, and the customer runs very well since 6 month.

Tinka

Just to clarify HP's support for HP3000 ends in 2006 ( I think)

SSA said to us yesterday that because of this their support ( on HP3000 ) would end then also.

oh is that so ?? in that case the manman users on HP-3000 would be totally orphaned when both their hardware vendor (HP) and their applications vendor (SSA) withdraw support.

If such a thing happens, what would be the migration / upgrade paths these users would choose to follow ? would these users want to look at Baan again or would they evaluate other options ?

aditya

Can anyone please clarify whether Baan IVa, IVb upto IVc3 versions also enjoy standard support upto
2008 just like Baan IVc4 ?

i have conflicting reports


thanks in advance

aditya

I mean BaaN IV A and b2 become only support at the end of 2003 . later one year with surcharge without developments . Baan IV c3 & c4 to at the end of 2008

Regards Ralph