Kubota Corp doing computer switch-over...down 20 days

[mrmikey]

I used SAP before I retired. It is a very stable platform but as MAX said, it doesn't play nice with pretty much anything else. At least any time I've attempted it. I didn't find it intuitive in the least, once you found out how to think like the programmers it wasn't bad.

 

[jfsawatzky]

Now I understand… SAP is core business software and they probably are running a number of modules.. that team will earn their pay.

 

[riptides]

Use SAP to find out how broken your internal systems and processss really are.

 

[KennJ]

Something doesn’t make sense… I have a number of questions. I work in IT and there’s additional important details to understand… is this planned or unplanned outage and what type of switchover is involved. I can only assume it’s unplanned and involves servers and probably a database(s) and needing to export and potentially transform / load data to the new system. Has a critical server failed and they are waiting for delivery of a new box?
If it’s planned why the need to shut down for 3 weeks? They should run production for longer or have a backup to use while working on the update/ upgrade. If it’s unplanned what is the timeframe based on? And is there not a clean backup they can use in the meantime?
Also, at what level is this occurring? I’d think it would be at a national level as opposed to international… each level should be secure but hackers are resourceful and employees are fallible. Note, I have no idea if they were hacked or not I’m speculating on the 3 week outage.

Yep, I made an order from Messick's today and these warning are all over the place.

I am a manufacturers rep, and one of our major principles changed over from their legacy system to JD Edwards. JDE people had been on site for 6 months preparing and mapping the switchover. they flipped the switch on April 1, and it failed MISERABLY! I was a year before anything started to get even minimal improvement. They couldn't even get a full BOM (bill of materials) to the factory floor! One of my customers' order had an 8 week lead time for an item with no moving parts... it took a year to ship!

If they are migrating software (and especially if they migrate to JDE) 20 days may be wildly optimistic!

 

[TractorTYMe]

I work in heavy equipment rental, and the system we went over to from Windows based to IBM i-series. Which is losely based upon IBM AS400 architecture. Backend screen says Welcome IBM 1980, 2024

 

[rScotty]

I gotta say that anyone can pick the wrong software. Older software actually advertised their "stand alone" ability as a positive feature. That was back before anyone had a clue how important it was going to be for software packages to interact intuitively.

I'm impressed that Kubota is willing to be making such a massive software shift.

And I'm pretty impressed with the tractor we bought from them as well. After almost 20 years, it continues to starts and run just like new.
rScotty