We are planning on upgrading from E9 to E10 and considering making the move from on premise to dedicated tenant cloud environment. We are a single site, located in U.S. 28 office users, 24 mes users
Hoping there are some businesses on here, that have done the same. We’d appreciate feedback, both the good and the bad you may have experienced with the move to Dedicated Tenancy.
Specifically, concerns about:
Performance (user experience)
Stability
Support from Epicor
Customizations (BAQ, BPM, UD fields/tables)
Smart Client?
File attachments (saved onsite, currently)
Product Configurator
Use of Crystal Reports (we know we need to change eventually, but would like use of them initially)
Bartender
Handhelds
Thank you for any input.
Hi Joy,
We went from 10.0.700.4 to DT back in December. Give me a little time over the weekend and I’ll add what I can. I would suggest that your biggest hurdle will be the 9 -> 10 conversion. How many configurators do you have? How many Crystal Reports?
Thanks,
Mark W.
And SERIOUSLY consider Cirrus / the ERP Analyzer and Upgrade Services. That area has had SO much effort in the past year to speed upgrades.
Additionally, I am stunned at some of the telemetry about the hundreds of real life customer systems going through that process. It’s been wonderful to have actionable data in planning sessions 
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I can Echo Bart - Start with ERP Analyzer - I twill reveal a lot of detail about your system and the potential effort needed to upgrade version 9 Customizations.
I would recommend making the jump to SSRS instead of Crystal in conjunction with your upgrade. You will need to do it anyway - best to rip the band-aid off now. I have seen mixed success with using Crystal in E10 environments and it was not worth the headaches clients went through in my opinion.
I have seen Epicor DT as well as other 3rd Party DT solutions work well. Best scenario is when the DT servers can be joined to your domain though. Not sure Epicor DT allows that
Hi Mark,
Would love to hear your feedback with regards to any limitations on DT. We only have one configurator but it handles the majority of our products. We have a consultant coming in to help with a rewrite for E10. In addition for the need based on the change in the structure, our products have also evolved over the years and so a do over is not a bad idea.
We are going through our reports to eliminate the ones we no longer use, in an effort to reduce the qty we have to decide on bringing over as crystal reports or rewriting.
Thank you!
Hi,
We really appreciate the suggestions and feedback. We have run the ERP Analyzer, it’s a great way to know what customizations and reports we have to focus on updating or rewriting. We are definitely going to take advantage of Epicor’s Upgrade services, but we are at a standstill as we try to compare the DT vs on-premise.
Just apprehensive about what issues we might run into on DT.
We also use Salesforce.com. We integrate with scribe, but looking at the Epicor Salesforce extension. Either way, more money has to be thrown into this upgrade. Most challenging upgrade so far…since 1998!
Hi Joy,
First, a little history. In a previous life, I started with Vantage on 8.0 (Progress) in 1998 as well. We upgraded to 9.0 but were early adopters and once we found some stability, we stayed there and never upgraded to 9.05. In my current life, I arrived three weeks prior to go-live on 10.0.700.4 on Single Tenant hosting which is provided by Epicor Managed Services. This is a separate group than the Cloud Team. My personal experience with EMS was very good. We had a dedicated agent and we met to cover issues periodically. Our rep was Fabio and he was fantastic. We had four instances of our databases: Live, Test, Pilot and Education. We had three virtual servers: application/database, a terminal server, and a third-party server. The domain is theirs and EMS had to add AD users ($/mo) or inactivate as needed. We were concerned about the stability of the Smart Client as it was new but over time, almost nobody used the Terminal Server unless they needed access and just weren’t close to their computer. All in all, we liked single tenancy. 24X7 support (we have facilities in the US, Europe, and Asia.) and we couldn’t do that internally for the price. The downside of ST? Upgrades. The cost of enlisting Epicor Consulting Services made it too expensive to stay current. (We actually purchased the software, so that was unusual for the hosted customers). We are a lean IT shop and rely heavily on cloud services because we want to spend our IT resources on using the products and not maintaining them. With the announcement of DT at last year’s Insights, we were excited. and with the cost of ST hosting and support, it was an easy decision to move to DT financially. Plus our users are already used to working with Epicor in the cloud. With that, here’s are experience with three months of DT:
Performance
I can’t compare to E10 on premise. We have found the initial load of forms slower than 10.0 ST but batch processing (MRP, etc) is faster. Europe feels a little more pain than the US users.
Stability
We had some stability issues with ST and VMs locking up but no stability issues since moving to DT. Despite the no hot-fix mantra, hot fixes do get applied in DT but for everybody, not one user. We had one fix that created an issue with labor entry and had to be backed out. When any code is applied, you generally lose your session and have to log in again. This has happened just once since most patches on done on the weekend – like this weekend we’re moving to 10.2.100.9. BTW, DT seems to update every other patch – about once a month in the middle of the month avoiding month-end financial and shipping activity. We’ve started on .3 and have moved to .5, .7. and now .9.
Support
We miss having a Fabio but the Cloud Team has been very responsive. I think we were in the first wave of customers to on-board after the initial group and there were some communication issues but that has been resolved. On your User screen, there’s a checkbox that says, “Send me Cloud Updates” but we weren’t getting them. This led to a few surprises when a hot-fix was applied!
Customizations
All of our Customizations came over in the upgrade, BAQs, forms, dashboards, etc. We had to redo any customized RDDs and there was no way to move our SSRS reports from 10.0. Currently, there is no way to use the Solution Workbench to upload solutions locally. We haven’t had the need yet but I think we’ll have to send them to the Cloud Team to upload for us if we need to install a solution.
Smart Client
Love the smart client with the HTTPS endpoints. You don’t feel any lag in typing (because it’s local compared to the Terminal Server) and reconnects happen in the background. The one downside of the Smart Client is the upgrade process. Whenever the client starts, it checks a system-wide .sysconfig file to see if the version is different. If so, the autoupdate runs. Since 10.2.100.7, users DO NOT have to have Admin privileges! Yay! OTOH, EVERY user downloads their 300MB client over the Internet. Some other companies have tricked the system into looking at a local deployment server but we are on the cloud for LESS local IT intervention so I’d love to see Epicor formalize a local deployment option for the Cloud Users. 40% of our internet traffic this week measured at the proxy was from Epicor Pilot client updates and we’ll repeat that again on Monday when the Production version updates. Having a local Deployment Server would have Epicor money on their edge-caching fees as well.
Epicor maintains a different local folder for Live, Pilot, Education, and any other optional instance so you can run multiple versions at once.
Epicor does provide (via EpicWeb) a list of all enhancements for each update when then Pilot is updated the Tuesday before the weekend update so you can test your system. More on testing later. There’s a PDF that has all the changes in an embedded Excel sheet so you can filter out the modules that are of interest.
File Attachments
We were storing our attachments on the Terminal Server because the server could write there. This is not an option in DT so we added DocStar, also in the Cloud. We have a lot more control with Document Types with DocStar. Every Document Type in DocStar can be assigned to different access groups, which you can’t do with File System types. At least with the cloud version, every user who does attachments needs to have a login in DocStar. (DocStar is licensed by concurrent user) At first we used the DocStar authentication but have moved to LDAP authentication, so they use their AD credentials now.
Product Configurator
I did a lot of work on V8 and E9 configurators. The 10.0 configurator was not stable but on 10.1+, it is a lot better. We have not had any limitations on Server Methods on DT. The only thing you can’t do is write to files on your local machine. Data Lookup tables replace all of the Excel file lookups and makes it much easier to move configurators around. It is a complete rewrite so try not to take too much knowledge from the older configurator. It’s a different product, so go into it as if you know nothing. You’re not losing any functionality, only gaining IMHO.
Crystal Reports
We made the decision not to use Crystal and went all SSRS right form the start. On DT, there are a couple of issues. You don’t have access to SSMS, so you can’t look at the data created by the RDD. Any errors thrown in SSRS code are not passed to the client and the Cloud Team has to send you the full error in the log file. 
Bartender and Handhelds
We don’t use either. In the past, I found it was easy enough to use a BPM to send actual printer language to the label printers through a web service – but I’m a geek. We have the Mobile license and CRM and that app is a sign of things to come. On 10.0, we had the Time and Expense apps but they are not supported in DT. We’re hoping a replacement is coming soon.
Sales Force
We don’t use Sales Force but I am finding that the REST interfaces are a very powerful way to integrate views from/to other systems.
DMT
Not sure if you’re using it but it works but it’s certainly slower than the ST scenario where we would transfer the file up to the datacenter and then run the import. It would be a nice addition to provide an upload queue and have DMT run at the server - even if only done in the background. I mean, that would be a cloud-based product, right? 
Electronic Interfaces
You can still do custom versions if you use them today, you just need to send them to the Cloud Team to install for you. Retrieving files from the Server is done through a new app that gives you a protected view of your logfiles, electronic interface files, and BAQ exports where you then download them to a local folder.
Education Database
The Education Database is not DT but MT so any restrictions to MT apply. This means you shouldn’t buy the Product Configurator module or any other module that requires C# coding (Advanced BPMs, etc.)
Major Upgrades
With any non-patch level changes (from .100 -> .200 or 10.1 - > 10.2, etc), you have the option to delay the upgrade but you will upgrade in the second wave. This is different than MT. This is for those who do not wish to be as pioneering as the first group.
For upgrades now, I must admit, I like skipping all of the threads here on e10 about errors during upgrades and “What did documentation mean when it said…? Let Epicor handle the issues. 
Support
For all Cloud users, there is a way to create a “Support User” that automatically deactivates after a user-defined period. When I have a support call, I create a support user for the Epicor support agent, send them a username, password, and my system ID. This is instead of “send me the database” because, well, they already have it. It’s a great time saver. There seems to be a little distance between Support and the Cloud Team and I really have to emphasize that we are Cloud Users to get the agent to handle the case appropriately.
Upgrade Services
We had no issues with Epicor Upgrade services/Consulting services. Our license file was missing a product but stuff happens.
Security
Starting in 10.2.100.9, Epicor is enforcing a password profile with a minimum set of requirements. Currently, there is no interaction with your Active Directory so the password MUST be secure. No more blank passwords for new users and no way for administrators to know users’ passwords. I’m hoping for support for Azure AD so Epicor, DocStar, and our Windows networks are all managed in just one place.
I hope that was helpful.
Mark W.
9 Likes
Mark,
That was awesome! I’ll be referring to that discussion for some time to come I’m sure.
Ernie
We upgraded to 10.1 on-prem last year so I can’t speak to DT but we also use SalesForce and stuck with the scribe connector. Our CAM couldn’t find any references for Epicor’s Salesforce extension that we could talk with and worried us away from it.
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Mark,
Wow, what a comprehensive reply!!! Thank you so much for sharing your experience and insight! This will be very helpful in our decision making. I also think this will be a great resource for many other customers contemplating the move to DT.
Again, many thanks,
Joy
You’re welcome Joy. BTW, in case I didn’t mention it. If we were to do it all over again, would I suggest moving to DT for our company with our goals? Absolutely.
Mark W.
What has been your experience with MES transactions? We are looking at the Cloud but are wary of relying on the internet for labor transactions due to speed. We have 50 MES licenses and about 150 shop personnel use MES to update time and attendance.
We have 12 MES licenses and 20 shop personnel, so I can’t give you a good comparison. Each transaction is just an http request, so clock in and out goes fairly quickly but I’m not sure how Start/End Activity would go. The transaction isn’t bad but I’m not sure how long switch employees would take - and not sure how you could load test that, but I’m sure there’s a way.
Mark W.
Mark
When you did this upgrade, did you also upgrade EDI. If so is this inhouse or used through 3rd party (we use SPS commerce). Also when you migrated did you look to use EDA for reporting? Can you expand upon you comments in Education Database as I am concerned about limitations in C# programming.
Very comprehensive discussion on the move. We are looking to move from ST 10.0.700.4 to DT this year.
John
Hi John,
Despite selling to the autos, we don’t use EDI here.
We are looking at EDA but have other items ahead of it right now.
We use our Pilot instance for development since Education is MT not DT. We do not write programs that required DLLs. To reduce upgrade work, we prefer loosely coupled solutions like REST.
Mark W.
If you use DLL for c# programs to import data from a BAQ, for example, you either have to compile the app in the Epicor directory or rebuild it every time the smart client updates. Annoying, but a 5 minute fix - just happens to hit 1-2x a month on Saturday for me.
This weekend we are moving our DT from the old hosting into Azure. I think we are the second and last group to make this move. It is nice to not have to fret too much about this type of upgrade, as our company has just me as an I.T. resource.
There is no chance I could have kept on the current version by being on premises. DT has been great for keeping us up to date. Our MES users don’t see any issues with clocking in and out or doing their other work, but we only have 5 stations using MES so it’s not quite a fair comparison.
The DT product is much better than the MT product if you are upgrading, they can do an upgrade and not an import/rebuild. We tried to upgrade from 8 to 10 on MT and it… went very poorly. 8 to 10 on DT was great in comparison, as it much more closely aligns with their traditional upgrade path. We had to go from 8 to 9 and 9 to 10 in a weekend but the guys at Epicor on our implementation team did that as part of our go-live budgeted work, and I am glad for it. Been live on DT for a year now.
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