So our company has be on-prem since the Vantage days. We’ve moved from Vantage 6.1 to Epicor 9, then Epicor 9 to Epicor 10.1 and now we are on 10.2.700.36. With our upcoming maintenance contract renewal upper management started looking into other software solutions due to cost. Most recently we had a meeting with Epicor about justifying the investment that we have with them and that’s when discussions on getting us to the current version came up. Unfortunately with me being an IT staff of one, I have not been able to keep us upgraded to the latest Kinetic version. In addition to that I have no educational resources to send people to so they can learn about Kinetic. We do not have the Epicor Education Module. So just performing a software upgrade and pulling the trigger is not the best method.
Epicor’s solution to justify our investment is to have them come out and do a “free to us” Business Process Review, and then help us migrate to the latest Cloud based version. We had a BPR done in early 2024, however managers never took the recommendations and adopted any of them. For an example, we don’t use MRP, our inventory team looks a the time phase material report every day to watch for shortages coming up and plans purchases off that. MRP was a huge recommendation but they didn’t want to start down that pathway and I’m not sure why.
I had my reservations on the cloud product due to loosing the direct DB access, but after further review we honestly don’t use that… I do all of my exports and data mining through BAQ’s. SO I’m only losing ability to quickly spin up a training DB, which we rarely use these days, and I also hear that the latest version we would getting some of those abilities back for cloud users.
SO really what I’m asking is, how have Epicor run conversions gone from on-prem to cloud, as well as do you feel that the cloud based product is just as good if not better than on-prem?
We currently have our on-prem environment hosted on a Server 2016 server so I know that is coming up on needing replacement soon so that would be a cost savings that we can remove, however the maintenance/subscription cost greatly increases. If upper management was upset with a on-prem 3 year maintenance with only 5% increase each year, I really can’t see them going for this cloud migration quote. In the quote they sent our first year for SaaS (year 2 of the contract) will be a 47% increase over the first year “on-prem maintenance” cost that they are quoting us. The 5 year plan quote has year 1 being our on-prem cost and year 2 I think having no “increase” but it goes up to the actual SaaS pricing, and then the following years are 5% increase every year. Just to clarify, we need an ITAR level plan so I know that is more expensive than any old cloud storage.
Any input on your cloud usage, or cloud migration would be appreciated. I would honestly love to not be responsible for keeping Epicor updated anymore.
You lose a ton (all) the control. But honestly if you are the sole IT Person this seems like a no brainer
There are lots of downsides that others can fill you in on. But if I was in your situation I’d definitely explore it. If you leave tomorrow it sounds like your company is screwed and you don’t want to put them in that position
You say all the control, but what do you use that you wouldn’t be able to if in the cloud?
As noted the only thing I can think of that would directly impact me is spinning up a test DB, or restarting app servers, which I think that is also coming back in the latest release.
I don’t have any external SQL connectors that mine data or anything like that, and the only thing that I have to worry about on that server is the backup script running and it clearing the log files to clean up the DB size.
And yes, the sole IT personnel is a huge risk. I hope someday that will be recognized for it’s true risk and they will get someone else on staff who has IT knowledge.
With SaaS going to 26.1 next May, there isn’t much time for you guys to upgrade from Classic to Kinetic UI. That would have me leery of jumping into SaaS. But as a former one-man-band IT department I feel you on how it’s hard to keep up on updates on-prem.
You are at the mercy of the cloud team. You cannot fix anything that goes wrong. Your downtime will be far higher than what you currently experience on premise due to scheduled maintenance windows alone, not to speak of unscheduled down time.
If you are seriously evaluating this, I strongly suggest you read some past threads here on epiusers about the various issues that cloud users run into on a regular basis. Plenty of content.
Yeah so that right there is something it is clearly not working in our current environment. I don’t have staff or management that is capable of testing a new deployment and perform that thorough end to end testing… and I don’t have enough knowledge on how data works it’s way through Epicor, I’m a PC and networking guy, I don’t understand the financials at all.
So in my situation I would prefer the scheduled/forced upgrades.
An example of another area where I would prefer scheduled upgrades, we had to replace 60 pc’s because of windows 10 losing support… Upper management did not approve my obsolesce plan in 2022, they preferred to use resources until they were dead. This has been a very chaotic year replacing that many devices.
That doesn’t change with cloud. The “upgrading” part is the easy part. It’s the testing and all that stuff that goes along with it. And if being forced to do it because you are cloud is way to get it done, well I guess that’s one way to do it . But you still have to do the same amount of work, you’re just forced to do it on Epicor’s schedule, or pay extra to have a slight delay. (oh and if you forget to ask for the delay you paid for, they try to tell you are SOL)
Unfortunately, upgrading Epicor isn’t like upgrading outlook or apple IOS. It’s too complicated, and Epicor just isn’t that good at what they do (yet?). I wish it was. I would love to have a software stable enough where a new version coming out is a “Cool let’s upgrade and see what’s new!” like it is with a phone OS. But it’s more like a “What did they break this time”…
We’re two weeks into our Kinetic upgrade and cloud move. So far it’s worked out very well. Response time to browser users seems to have improved, we’ve jumped 2 versions and now won’t have that burden internally of doing the upgrades. We’ve had some issues with BPMs not working quite right moving from 3p-onprem to cloud. That’s a work in progress but we’re still getting things done. Have also seen diminished performance of homegrown reporting using the read-only database, especially if it’s a hybrid of cloud/local data sources. Having to rewrite a lot on the fly.
I am a big fan of Epicor Cloud. I have helped a few customers migrate from On-Prem to Clou d and for the most part Epicor does a good job.
They used to have a program called Cirrus (or something like that) - it has a new name not sure - but it means you typically get 3 “Passes” or conversions.
Pass 1 = your first login to cloud - here you will update your customizations dashbaords and reports to work with the new cloud and do most of your testing
Pass 2 = Is sometimes called the timing pass - the second pass allows you to record the time it takes for the Epicor Upgrade and then applying your updated Customizations, Dashboards, Reports, etc.
Pass 3 is the “Go Live” pass
I must confess i have not done this this for a year - so Epicor may have upgraded/changed the process.
Also, it depends on your Conversion process. I.e. if you want to change your GL Structure or your Resource Groups or just leave behind years of unused data, etc. then a DMT (Data Migration Tool) may be a better solution allowing you to create all new.
I have a few small companies that have Zero IT staff - for them the Epicor Cloud is a great solution.
As @josecgomez says you will be sacrificing full access to the database - that is not allowed and your trusted SSMS is not an option. However, you can do your AdHoc queryies in Epicor.
Yeah I think no matter how we slice it we are going to be making the leap from Classic to Kinetic with no intermediary… Also to add to that, the “optional Kinetic” screens that users could launch if we moved to say 2023.1 right now… I’d be getting calls every hour of someone clicking on the preview this form, and then freaking out about how to get back to the classic screen. The users here are not ones to explore and experiment, so I think they need the hard cut to move forward.
Oh and I’ve always worked on the idea of “what did they break this time” remember we’ve been on Epicor since the days of Vantage 4.0… I went through a dump and load conversion from V6.1 to E9 since the upgrade path to 8 was a disaster and the interface was slow as heck.
That is the upgrade path that they described at the latest Users Group meeting I went to near Boston. The three pass method which is honestly how I’ve done all on-prem upgrades. First one just gets the data there and you spend time finding all the forms and reports that need to be fixed. Then you export those, and convert again and import all the customizations to get a time line and then test more, and then go live on the last.
At least that’s how I used to do it with my father when he was here. He was the cost accountant and knew Epicor quote to cash, they lost that knowledge when he retired and his role was absorbed by the CFO who isn’t familiar with Epicor.
That’s what we did. Pass 3 was go-live weekend. A few hiccups with bolt-ons (EDIHQ, EDA, Smart/IP&O, BarTender)…some of which were quick fixes and others not so much.
That makes SaaS a harder path for you guys then. There are currently two major upgrades each year SaaS customers are forced to take. There is “some changes” coming in that with 2026 release they are moving to a move CI/CD method which who knows how that’ll affect us SaaS customers in the release & testing requirements.
See we don’t have any stuff like that. The only thing that we would have to get working, which we would transition to their software, is QuickShip. We currently still use Agile, or ShipDNA for freighting into UPS and FedEx software.
We have a very vanilla Epicor Package.
That being said, the Pres here is curious on what people roughly pay per seat per year for SaaS cloud. I know modules will vary that but he still wanted me to ask.
They are also typically the ones who don’t have onsite staff to deal with Epicor issues, and that is rapidly becoming this company. We have no Epicor experts here any more.
Also others who have issues with Cloud are ones with many more customizations and external connectors to the system, another thing we do not utilize here.
SO each option has its benefits and that is driven by resource availability and system utilization… so It’s good to see those various replies.
So then there is no good solution other than to sit on 10.2.700.36… I feel if they have a deadline then people will have to FIND time to test the software and if they don’t then they have to deal with the consequences.
Right now I don’t have the authority to force that on people, and if I were to just upgrade after people “didn’t have time to test” my head would be on the chopping block to reverse that upgrade.
I will honestly appreciate the loss in responsibility of keeping the ERP system current. It will now be the responsibility of each department to ensure it will work when Epicor schedules the upgrades.
That is a fair point. If you don’t customize much or at all, then cloud may be a good option. Epicors greatest strength and weakness is the ability to customize, but if you are pretty vanilla, then you’ll probably be ok with their basic QA testing and can maybe risk upgrades with little testing.
. But you still have to do the same amount of work, you’re just forced to do it on Epicor’s schedule, or pay extra to have a slight delay. (oh and if you forget to ask for the delay you paid for, they try to tell you are SOL)