Will,
You are on 10.2.500. You will not be forced to do anything. If you upgrade to Epicor 11 you can opt for the custom cloud option. Custom cloud does not require you to update on a cadence.
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Are you sure about this, meaning Epicor has committed to this with the new affiliated partners program? I ask specifically as even with Epicor SaaS at the Enterprise tier you are required to update at least every 18 months, I suspect that such a policy will likely apply to anyone who is an authorized affiliate partner.
Sorry if I am missing something but my understanding is the Custom Cloud is this above discussed affiliate program.
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Cloud should be a choice, not a checkbox. Let Epicor customers move when the platformâand their businessâare truly ready. Not every customer can simply jump to Public SaaS and call it a day. In MEA region itself there are Government, defense, and security-focused organizations running Epicor often cannot expose their databases due to policy and compliance requirements. Many still have firm âno public cloudâ rules.
We learned this the hard way. Last year itself on Public SaaS, we experienced three major outages. That alone pushed us to seriously discuss moving to a dedicated/private cloud. considerable performance and latency have improved noticeablyâand so far, zero downtime.
Some functionality still works better (or only reliably) in on-prem or private cloud setups. Saying âjust move to Kinetic SaaSâ sounds great on slides, but reality on the shop floor is different.
Forcing a cloud-only strategy without flexibility feels rushed and counterproductive. It creates frustration for existing customers and becomes a barrier for new license adoptionâespecially for large, database-heavy Epicor environments.
Thanks,
Arun
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Yes, I am sure about this. I have had extensive conversations with Epicor and our Custom Cloud provider. The only change I will be making to my environment is the licensing. Everything on my environment will remain the same and I will still maintain control of the infrastructure. The only thing I will lose is the ability to manipulate my SDKs. Thatâs a bummer, but I have a great partner that can do it for me. I will still write my code and have them install it.
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Arun, I am not disagreeing with the hassle aspect. Yes, I understand why Epicor is doing this and I also agree it stinks. The mission is to find a way to mitigate the risks for the business and find a solution that works best for your organization.
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One of the first things I did, my email.
The response was a vague we can accommodate all of these with ease in the cloud. No price listing just a very non informative email that we could have a call to go over these questions. I donât need another call to add to all of the useless calls I have to be in every day. I want a cost break down, I know it will be an estimation, but it will give me something to give to leadership.
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Just tell your account manager you want to move to cloud. They will get you a quote that has real numbers in it.
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Is it possible for a cloud application to talk to an on-prem database (technically speaking)? Or do both pieces always have to reside in the cloud?
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It is absolutely possible thought the latency would be awful.
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Although, functions and directives create DLLs today, so I imagine that Epicor has found a way upon spin-up of the container to recompile these. Containers often accept configuration at start up as well.
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Donât forget to factor in the 10% year over year increase.
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The last formal quote I got included the 5 years broken down year by year for pricing so Epicor is transparent about that up front, or at least they are now or maybe my CAM is conscious of that requirement for us.
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Kinetic Custom Cloud is a product (a set of SKUs) sold by Epicor. Itâs not an affiliate or hosting program, itâs a way to purchase single-tenant SaaS.
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Ok, so Custom Cloud is not what has been mentioned above as this Affiliate Program where 3rd parties will be able to host the SaaS instance but rather a hosted option from Epicor, or is it still 3rd party?
I think this, at least IMO, is part of the struggle some of the customer base has with the announcement, Epicor has multiple tiers/products in the cloud hosting category. My understanding from my CAM is that:
- Epicor has multiple, different cloud options.
- Of those, only two would apply to us, âPublic Cloudâ (approx. 90% of their cloud customer base) and âEnterprise Cloudâ (recommended for orgs that have 140+ full user seats).
So I am kind of curious where Custom Cloud fits into this.
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There are the dozen prior offerings that they donât sell anymore for new customers, or they do but the name changed and people here still use the old name, etc.
This is what I see for their SaaS offerings. [Added pic below.]
And then there is the mystery of what on earth kind of role partners will play in the future for hosting.
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I think that it would be hard for it not to be a policy for official active support. As per one my prior posts, even Microsoft .Net Core LTS releases only have 3-year support cycles which effectively forces/limits large software organizations to limit full support for particular products and stacks to around 18 months to 2 years (due to some margin being required before for upgrades, validations, and potential skipping etc.).
Unfortunately, the days of 3- and 5-year LTS releases seem well past us now, and that does not seem to be something Epicor would have any practical choice about.
Yes, absolutely. There are many different approaches and flexibilities around referencing and loading assets from outside the container too. Naturally, either way, I expect that the Linux container approach would require re-architecting of some organizations non-modern framework integrations and extensions and it would be good for some differentiation regarding the concerns that re-architecting effort vs the other main concerns raised (compliance, stability cost, control, flexibility, etc.).
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Also, this is my Kool-Aid.
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Thankfully, Microsoft has figured out the direction of .NET and the releases are very clear now. Itâs also been pretty easy to upgrade to the new .NET core versions. Weâve been able to keep internal software current with minimal changes between versions.
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Earlier I made an emotional response, and I believe it is still valid. That being said, here is one better laid out.
I am a current SaaS customer. Overall, this has worked out ok for us. I have found ways to work around or mitigate many limitations, but letâs be honest, Iâm not normal.
Many customers will not be able to do this, without significant in house talent, or significant outside investment.
We were actually thinking of moving our business back on prem. Why you might ask? Well there are many reasons.
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Despite significant improvements in the tooling and ui, many parity and user conveniences are still lacking in the current ui and development realm. We have made significant investment and customization in the classic interface, which is being prematurely retired. You can say all you want that we all knew the transition was coming, and yes that is true, but we had a business to run, so we made Epicor work for what we needed. We tried as much as possible to stay vanilla, and do things the Epicor way, but that is not always possible. In fact, that was part of the draw. If we couldnât shoehorn our business processes into Epicor, we could mold and massage Epicor into doing what we needed. Perpetually migrating customizations in the new UI that is at best still in a âbetaâ state is not conducive to running a business. We just donât have that kind of manpower, money, or frankly patience to do that.
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Epicorâs SaaS offering usually works well for our size, and level of use, but not always. I donât have any metrics. but the amount of problems certainly seems to be increasing, rather than stablizing as you would expect as Epicor gains more experience as a cloud provider. I understand there will be growing pains, but more frequent slowdowns, reporting issues, and increasing maintenance does not give me confidence in this area. The forum is rife with examples of these issues. They are not isolated, they are real and present concerns. I have real concernt over bringing more customers into this immature and obviously fragile house of cards.
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Going back on prem would have allowed us more control over our environment, which is very attractive. I am not at the mercy of Epicor support for as many issues, or tasks. I appreciate and use the tools that have come out, like the CMP, but they still lack the type of control and tools we would like.
The above reasons / concerns are certainly not all I have. I have a lot of anxiety over the current state of Epicor support. To me, and others, it seems strained to keep up with the current level of work that is required. It seems support has a lack of general product knowledge a lot of times, or even a lack of willingness to understand problems that are being reported. On the surface at least, there seems to be a lot of buck passing, or kicking the can down the road. Being told to enter ideas for verified problems, or parity issues is not a valid response.
As far as those who are currently on-prem, and want to stay that way, I feel for you.
Iâm sorry for the harsh words, but regardless of the reasons for the change in direction, I feel you were lied to. We have all had repeated assurances that this would not happen. Many of you have invested significant resources on that promise. The rug has been ripped out from under you. I donât believe that is right, in any way.
I havenât heard any real official reasons for this change in direction, but even when I do, from what we have heard in bits and pieces, and speculation, I believe they all ring hollow. I donât believe there are any real technical or innovation issues with this decision. The product is the same. Itâs an instance based, traditionally on-prem solution, that has had tooling wrapped around it to run in the cloud. Itâs not cloud native, and it never will be. They will need a new product to ever get there. This is not that product.
I believe, like many of you, that this is a purely financial decision. Epicor will make more money by switching everyone to a subscription model, with the plus for them, that they will lose a small hassle of supporting on prem going forward. Sure, they will lose a few customers, but they have many of us over a barrel already, and they will for sure hold all the cards, when they control all your data and infrastructure. When youâre locked in, itâs pretty easy for them to jack up prices on a whim, and I assume they will. The market may only bear so much, but Epicor has their thumb on the scale so to speak.
I am glad to see, from what little I have learned, that there may be a path forward for some, with the âcustom cloudâ offering, but I donât think that is sufficient. At least itâs something?
Anyway, we live in interesting times. There are sure going to be a lot of crazy conversations going on at Insights 
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SAP B1 is on premise but if not great at multi-company. 83,000 companies on this ERP.
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