Up front, I have no experience using Epicor's specific hosting solution,
however I do have experience with Epicor in a hosted environment.
It's all about Cost/benefit/headache/access.
One company I work with who uses a hosted solution does it for a few
different reasons from what I can tell.
One reason was they wanted to be up and running in a short time frame, from
the date they signed with Epicor, they were up and running a live production
in about 9 months, this was going from a complete blank installation to go
live. While they did not go live with everything right away, they have been
integrating secondary companies and parts of the software on a piece by
piece basis since the initial go live.
Remove the need for worrying about hardware, they don't need to buy it,
maintain it, replace it, or anything else. Everything is taken care of by
the hosting company, including their backups and maintaining uptime.
Another reason is the distributed locations of their company, some in
Europe, some in the US, and they are all using the same system. It's easier
and more reliable for them to have a 3rd party hosting it where all sites
can access it equally instead of needing to build and maintain connections
between sites. I know I would rather have an office or user in Norway
contact a hosting company to say that they can't connect at 3am my time
versus need to have a person in the office in New Jersey case that happens,
or call me to get up and possibly go into the office to fix the problem.
Another reason is that they have outsourced their Epicor administration
tasks and responsibilities as well, so it eliminates needing to give a third
party admin access to their internal company network versus only to their
Epicor Environment. It also makes it a ton easier to grant access to any
outside consultants and reduces the need to have a consultant on site for
work as often, thus reducing additional costs like travel, hotel etc., but
also most consultants remote rates are lower than onsite rates.
So, those are a couple of the benefits to it being hosted somewhere.
It also makes access by non-technical mobile salesman much easier as well.
Go to a webpage and log in versus the common internal process of connect
through vpn, then run this RDP, then run Epicor.
I also think that hosting it when you are new to the software can be a
benefit since you don't know everything about the software, and it can give
you a shorter time to go live versus building your own system in house, and
the cost of any mistakes in hardware can be dramatic, versus having it
hosted, you can get that VM that it is likely running on adjusted and
changes much more easily. Oh, need more RAM? Click Click Click, done. Need
More Processors? Click Click Click, done. Then maybe down the road you make
an investment in the hardware and bring it in house, but the learning curve
for maintaining the system wasn't as big a factor in affecting your go live.
I think a lot of this changes if you already have a lot of experience with
Epicor's products and you have already worked with it on your own systems. I
think it would be a vastly different number of people who would go from
internal to hosted versus starting on hosting and then bringing it internal
after a year, or 5. Part of it being the control freak aspect of most good
IT managers and admins, they want to know everything about their system and
have complete control.
Lots of factors overall need to be taken into account, while average annual
costs are probably higher with a hosted solution, up-front costs are much
lower with hosted. How you use the system is also important as well, if you
are using it for quotes, orders, inventory and financial more than things
like jobs, mrp, configurator, shipping and other manufacturing process
components, then hosting may not have as great a detriment to your end user
experience compared to someone who is using MES and the manufacturing
components heavily.
Third party software is also a big thing from my POV, if you use almost none
then you would be better for hosting than if you are using a whole bunch of
the third party products, service connect, Insite, AFR, APM, etc.
Software costs are another aspect, many times it's not as costly to use SQL
in a hosted environment because the host has a license agreement with MS
compared to what it would cost you to buy a license for something like SQL,
or SharePoint or Enterprise Server over Standard Server etc.
A little bit of rambling in there, but mileage may vary so it's worth
evaluating all the possible positives and negatives for each situation in
regards to hosting or not.
-----Original Message-----
From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
Donna
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 9:57 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Epicor Hosting Experiance and any hidden costs
Hello,
I would like to know if anyone is using and has any experience with using
Epicor 9.05 and Epicor help desk hosting service on Epicor's site. We
currently have a Vantage server 6.1.523 on site with a 40 user
20 DC license that I need to upgrade. I would like to know the risks and if
it's worth the cost to host or keep in-house. I am doing a 5 year cost
analysis on keeping Epicor in house or having it hosted. If anyone could
comment on either one they feel is better or worst please do I appreciate
all the insight. I would like to keep it in house where it has been with
being able to have the ability to have control over the server when we need
it with no interruption.
Thanks
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must have
already linked your email address to a yahoo id to enable access. )
(1) To access the Files Section of our Yahoo!Group for Report Builder and
Crystal Reports and other 'goodies', please goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.
(2) To search through old msg's goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/messages
(3) To view links to Vendors that provide Vantage services goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/linksYahoo! Groups Links
however I do have experience with Epicor in a hosted environment.
It's all about Cost/benefit/headache/access.
One company I work with who uses a hosted solution does it for a few
different reasons from what I can tell.
One reason was they wanted to be up and running in a short time frame, from
the date they signed with Epicor, they were up and running a live production
in about 9 months, this was going from a complete blank installation to go
live. While they did not go live with everything right away, they have been
integrating secondary companies and parts of the software on a piece by
piece basis since the initial go live.
Remove the need for worrying about hardware, they don't need to buy it,
maintain it, replace it, or anything else. Everything is taken care of by
the hosting company, including their backups and maintaining uptime.
Another reason is the distributed locations of their company, some in
Europe, some in the US, and they are all using the same system. It's easier
and more reliable for them to have a 3rd party hosting it where all sites
can access it equally instead of needing to build and maintain connections
between sites. I know I would rather have an office or user in Norway
contact a hosting company to say that they can't connect at 3am my time
versus need to have a person in the office in New Jersey case that happens,
or call me to get up and possibly go into the office to fix the problem.
Another reason is that they have outsourced their Epicor administration
tasks and responsibilities as well, so it eliminates needing to give a third
party admin access to their internal company network versus only to their
Epicor Environment. It also makes it a ton easier to grant access to any
outside consultants and reduces the need to have a consultant on site for
work as often, thus reducing additional costs like travel, hotel etc., but
also most consultants remote rates are lower than onsite rates.
So, those are a couple of the benefits to it being hosted somewhere.
It also makes access by non-technical mobile salesman much easier as well.
Go to a webpage and log in versus the common internal process of connect
through vpn, then run this RDP, then run Epicor.
I also think that hosting it when you are new to the software can be a
benefit since you don't know everything about the software, and it can give
you a shorter time to go live versus building your own system in house, and
the cost of any mistakes in hardware can be dramatic, versus having it
hosted, you can get that VM that it is likely running on adjusted and
changes much more easily. Oh, need more RAM? Click Click Click, done. Need
More Processors? Click Click Click, done. Then maybe down the road you make
an investment in the hardware and bring it in house, but the learning curve
for maintaining the system wasn't as big a factor in affecting your go live.
I think a lot of this changes if you already have a lot of experience with
Epicor's products and you have already worked with it on your own systems. I
think it would be a vastly different number of people who would go from
internal to hosted versus starting on hosting and then bringing it internal
after a year, or 5. Part of it being the control freak aspect of most good
IT managers and admins, they want to know everything about their system and
have complete control.
Lots of factors overall need to be taken into account, while average annual
costs are probably higher with a hosted solution, up-front costs are much
lower with hosted. How you use the system is also important as well, if you
are using it for quotes, orders, inventory and financial more than things
like jobs, mrp, configurator, shipping and other manufacturing process
components, then hosting may not have as great a detriment to your end user
experience compared to someone who is using MES and the manufacturing
components heavily.
Third party software is also a big thing from my POV, if you use almost none
then you would be better for hosting than if you are using a whole bunch of
the third party products, service connect, Insite, AFR, APM, etc.
Software costs are another aspect, many times it's not as costly to use SQL
in a hosted environment because the host has a license agreement with MS
compared to what it would cost you to buy a license for something like SQL,
or SharePoint or Enterprise Server over Standard Server etc.
A little bit of rambling in there, but mileage may vary so it's worth
evaluating all the possible positives and negatives for each situation in
regards to hosting or not.
-----Original Message-----
From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
Donna
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 9:57 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Epicor Hosting Experiance and any hidden costs
Hello,
I would like to know if anyone is using and has any experience with using
Epicor 9.05 and Epicor help desk hosting service on Epicor's site. We
currently have a Vantage server 6.1.523 on site with a 40 user
20 DC license that I need to upgrade. I would like to know the risks and if
it's worth the cost to host or keep in-house. I am doing a 5 year cost
analysis on keeping Epicor in house or having it hosted. If anyone could
comment on either one they feel is better or worst please do I appreciate
all the insight. I would like to keep it in house where it has been with
being able to have the ability to have control over the server when we need
it with no interruption.
Thanks
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
Useful links for the Yahoo!Groups Vantage Board are: ( Note: You must have
already linked your email address to a yahoo id to enable access. )
(1) To access the Files Section of our Yahoo!Group for Report Builder and
Crystal Reports and other 'goodies', please goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/files/.
(2) To search through old msg's goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/messages
(3) To view links to Vendors that provide Vantage services goto:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vantage/linksYahoo! Groups Links