Yesterday’s ERP systems tomorrow on third party support

TomorrowNow, the aptly named US third party ERP support company recently acquired by SAP, is bringing its services to the UK and Europe. The firm, which now has offices in Maidenhead and Amsterdam, says it halves users’ maintenance contact costs for the former JD Edwards and PeopleSoft ERP systems. Lon Fiala, vice president of global marketing, says it also allows them to continue on existing older releases, rather than face the cost and effort of upgrade, for a further decade. “It’s amazing how many [JDE] World customers are still out there running AS/400s – and we think that’s very important.” He concedes that TomorrowNow won’t be offering the full Oracle back-up, but notes that these are mature systems. “So we focus on mission critical support. Also we cover tax and regulatory updates so they can continue to use their systems,” he says. As for upgrades, he recommends taking delivery of your latest release entitlement before contract severance, and “put it on the shelf”. His company can then support upgrade as and when necessary. Then in 2015, when Oracle looks for migration to Project Fusion, he says his company will look to support a transition instead to SAP. Indeed it already provides support for SAP’s Safe Passage migration. Already, ex JD Edwards sales heavyweights Nigel Pullin and Nick Rawls have joined up and Fiala says he’s “aggressively hiring” more staff.