Not sure how many Epicor Public Cloud (SaaS) customers we have on here, but I was surprised to get 0 hits on a search for the Premium Pilot environment. It has been a bit of a quest to get some of this information, so I wanted to share it here. I have attached a document that goes into a bit more detail of what is included with the Public Cloud option, and also has some useful and detailed information regarding cadence of updates, and other available options.
A few key points:
The standard subscription includes the live and pilot environments, as well as education (I believe this is optional).
The standard pilot environment does not include these features, which require the optional Premium Pilot Environment:
Enterprise Search
Enterprise Data Discovery (EDD)
Web Access
Mobile Access
Information Worker (optional e-mail integration module, cannot be configured to work with the standard pilot environment (or with the AD sync functionality)).
Premium Pilot pricing would be as negotiated with your partner or direct with Epicor, but ballpark would be about CDN $400 per month (before discounts). You can purchase this as a month-to-month subscription, but expect to pay a premium of ~CDN $100 per month over full contract term pricing.
Another point to be aware of with the Public Cloud product, is that some optional modules may only be available for on-premise installations. One of these that we discovered is ConnectCX, an Outlook e-mail integration module that was originally developed by a third party, then subsequently acquired by Epicor. These can be challenging to find information on as well - if you look on Epicweb (requires client credentials), and scroll down to Extended Solutions, you will find more information.
One more thing to be aware of when considering the SaaS product - speed. On a decent system with a good internet connection, it can take over 30 seconds to start the client. Forms / screens commonly take over ten seconds to load - you can mitigate this to some extent with per-form caching, but there is only so much of that you can do. I would strongly recommend at least 16 GB RAM for client systems.
A lot of this is filed under “things I wish I knew before starting this project” - I am hoping the information helps someone else on their journey.
The standard product is Production and Pilot. Embedded education is Multi-Tenant so you won’t be able to do some of the courses that require coding in BPMs, configurators, etc.
Premium Pilot came out later than when we went live but we didn’t care about Enterprise Search, EDD, etc.
I’ve been working toward integration with O365 using MS-Graph. If you’re going to do cloud, why not go all the way?
Yes. If you move your server further away from your client, you can expect the rich client to be slower. Period. Some users have turned to Terminal Services/Windows Virtual Desktops to move the client closer to the servers in the Central Region of Azure. It’s definitely faster. As Epicor moves toward a pure web client (Kinetic + REST), the speed issue will improve since less data will be moving and the client will be lighter. On the server side though, the cloud will eventually give you scale power that you won’t be able to replicate cheaply on-prem. The elastic nature of the cloud will be able to run MRP, Cost Roll Ups, etc way faster. Even without that elasticity, our MRPs are faster than on Prem.
On the plus side, you get a much more relaxing upgrade weekend and cheaper with your subscription. Your annual support is included. You’re always up-to-date with the latest fixes. Up-to-date users get patches quicker - especially security and compliance updates.
Moving to the cloud is a change in expectations. You lose some control (and potentially UI speed) but you have fewer responsibilities too. Azure is only ten years old and Epicor has not yet released a true cloud product. Once it does, you can expect to get a lot more for your IT budget.
I need to figure out how to do partial post quotes…
Edited my post - meant to say Production and Pilot. Thanks for the clarification.
O365 integration would be fantastic! Will be interested on how you make out with that. Epicor should be doing that themselves, and selling it.
Speed: I should clarify as well that we haven’t had a full test in the live environment yet. My understanding is that Pilot is resource-light, so I am hoping we will have better performance with Live. Would appreciate any feedback anyone has on client system RAM requirements, forms caching, etc. (general performance tweaks).
Other cloud perks are definitely significant - I sure don’t miss those stressful upgrade cycles.
I’ve always thought so but they say it isn’t. The tough part of any Pilot (on-prem or in the cloud) is to unhook your integrations and to cancel jobs that don’t need to run. Definitely a job for automation! Someday…
This is direct from the document I attached: Your Pilot system is run on a scaled-back environment rather than a full production
system for efficiency and focus, so it does not include select modules that are rarely
tested during upgrades beyond implementation.
I read that to mean that Pilot would be expected to be slower, but that’s an assumption - we haven’t actually done any benchmark testing.
I was wondering if anybody had a clear understanding of the “Premium Pilot Extension”. We did purchase this when we began with Epicor. We are still in the implementation phase, looking to Go-Live in the first quarter next year.
I understand that the “Premium Pilot Extension” grants additional functionality (Enterprise Search, EDD, etc.). However, I assumed (based on the name) that this was installed on our “PILOT” environment… which, as far as I can tell, is true.
The catch is, we have been instructed to keep our “PILOT” environment clean (no transactional data, testing) as we will over-write our “PRODUCTION” Database with “PILOT” prior to going live. In this case, we can’t really use “PILOT” for development of Enterprise Search, EDD layouts, etc.
Speaking with a couple Epicor consultants, they stated that we may be able to “move” our Premium Pilot Extension to our THIRD/test environment… which should then give us the ability to test and develop this additional functionality prior to Go-Live.
Before I request “moving” our Premium Pilot Extension from PILOT to THIRD… I wanted to see if anybody had any insight. In my mind it would make sense to move it to THIRD so we can test some of these features. Having it on PILOT doesn’t really help us at all since we need to keep PILOT clean of transactions. Does this sound right?
At what point would it make sense to have this extension on our PILOT environment?
Think of the Extra Environment (Third as labeled in the SaaS world) as your Development area. That would make the Premium Pilot as your Quality Assurance testing instance to Validate All the Functionality works before the move to LIVE.
Once LIVE you should be able to drop the THIRD and then use Premium as Development as you will Never then do a copy Up To LIVE.
