More than 15 years after it was “replaced” by OneWorld (now know as EnterpriseOne) the World version of JD Edwards is finally fading away. The customer base has fallen to under 1,000 organizations worldwide and the rate of replacement is accelerating. The surprise is not that this is happening but that it took this long to occur.
A hard core of rabid loyalists remains. Emotionally they find the slow demise of a product they have bonded with disheartening. Much of the loyalty is tied to the server environment they still refer to as AS/400. It is equally hard for loyalists to accept that IBM long ago abandoned them as well. All that is left of the once mighty AS/400 franchise is that its operating system is one of three options available with IBM Power servers. Sadly, very little is being spent by IBM enhancing that operating system or its RPG development environment.
Not surprisingly, a high percentage of those replacing World choose EnterpriseOne. The next most common scenario is to standardize on an ERP platform used by other groups within a large enterprise. SAP and Oracle eBusiness Suite are common alternatives when this happens.
Occasionally, Oracle’s own applications sales force will convince a World customer to move to eBusiness Suite. Some times this is because Oracle has chosen to have its ERP platforms specialize by industry and eBS is a better fit. More often it is because Oracle’s application sales force is more familiar with eBS. Before being pressured into choosing eBS it is appropriate to make sure that the case for EnterpriseOne has been fairly presented.
Oracle no longer maintains a separate group in Denver overseeing the World community. One organization looks after the needs of the entire JDE customer base. John Schiff, the last executive responsible for World, still keeps an eye on the special needs of this community but it is only one of his responsibilities.
There is no plot afoot within Oracle to drive customers off World. Oracle will happily collect maintenance payments from World customers for many years to come. Don’t, however, expect Oracle to spend more on product improvements than it collects in maintenance fees. Future World enhancements will thus be constrained by whatever a slowly shrinking development team can accomplish.
There is no reason for those who are getting exactly what they need out of World to rush to replace it. At the same time, World is technologically obsolete and will never catch up. Realists will accept that at the point where major improvements are needed replacement will almost certainly be the right choice.
Three or more years from now Oracle Fusion may become the preferred option for World replacement. In the meantime, EnterpriseOne remains the obvious choice. It is my company’s experience that moving from World to E1 can be less expensive and difficult than many customers imagine.
The greatest impediment to replacing World is often custom enhancements. Retiring them can be painful and expensive, but maintaining them and living without improvements that otherwise would be available is usually a worse choice. The longer replacement is postponed the deeper the hole can get, especially if additional customizations are made as time passes. Those stuck in this downward cycle need to find a way out.
If you are struggling with a decision as to when or whether to replace World let us know. We can point you to many resources that might make the decision easier than you imagine.
November 18, 2009 at 4:52 am
Hi,
Can you point us to the resources that will help to take a faster and easier decision of whether to upgrade from A7.3 to A9.2 or E1 9.0?
Praseed
November 18, 2009 at 9:49 am
A lot of the resistance to the move from World to E1 had to do with repetitive or “heads down” data entry. Many customers saw the early web version of E1 and ran screaming. Now, heads down entry response is much improved as E1 on the web has matured, and the positives of migration far outweigh the negatives.
November 18, 2009 at 10:24 am
This article is questionable. He obviously doesn’t know much about the “AS/400” as the article is riddled with mis-information. His information is excruciatingly false on obvious areas, making his case in other areas highly questionable.
November 18, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Wow, I totally disagree with this article, we’ve had nothing but positive interaction and immediate response with our recent 9.2 upgrade. It has great new technology, filled in the missing pieces and we now have no desire to move to the much more expensive E1. I am getting bugs fixed MUCH faster than we ever did when we were co-existent and had issues on the OneWorld side. No comparison.. and still as I talk to E1 customers, our customer service is much better. So I may be one of the “die hard loyalists” but financially, technically and staffing all gives me a reason to be that way.
November 18, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I’m happy to hear some of you saying that you are so happy with World 9.2. I am on E1 8.10 with my current company but after many, many years working with World clients as both an employee and a consultant, I have to say I always found the customer service reps for World to be much more knowledgable than the E1 CS reps. Also, I miss the amazing stability of World as compared to E1. I still go back to my old World manuals to find the fixes and gain understanding of the software; things that I can not find in the new E1 manuals.
November 19, 2009 at 10:21 am
I agree with Julie on this one. There’s really not much to agree with in the article. Author claims Oracle will pressure customers to change – we have yet to get any contact from Oracle suggesting we do anything other than update to World A9.2 – and even that was mainly initiated by us.
As far as being “technically obsolete” – again knowing that this gentleman is “technically inept” in his facts in regards to the POWER box – it’s no surprise he’d make these kind of statements.
November 20, 2009 at 12:37 am
Change is the only constant in life. You got to keep pace with technology if you are using technology. If you note JDE moved its code from AS/400 to windows client/server to Internet. There got to be some reason for that. JDE wanted to keep pace with the emerging technologies to be alive in the market. This smart move by JDE is what kept it alive for so many years. It is now not a matter of good verses bad rather what is more popular in the market. This is the age of internet and windows whether you agree or not.
November 20, 2009 at 1:04 am
I totally agree with Julie on this. Worldsoft is very much alive and not dead and so is the iseries. Infact we continue to provide services around upgrading customers from prior releases to newer releases in World/Enterprise One and customers are quite satisfied with the functionality.
November 20, 2009 at 7:18 am
David,
This will certainly be a controversial blog entry. I posted it to the JDEtips group on LinkedIn, so you might be getting more feedback.
Personally, I think World Software has another 5-10 years of life, with enhancements gradually tapering off during that time frame.
Andy
November 20, 2009 at 10:15 am
Gautam,
You use technology that best suits it’s purpose.
But just so you know – for those who like the browser interface – just in case you didn’t realize JDE World DOES have a browser interface – that works on the iSeries – and it works very well!
December 12, 2009 at 9:06 pm
“…The customer base has fallen to under 1,000 organizations worldwide and the rate of replacement is accelerating. ”
Ha! This is woefully inaccurate, sir. There are more than 3,000 active customers on JDE World at this time. As others have noted, your mis-information regarding such simple facts as this makes everything else in your article questionable.
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