IFS 9 to Cloud Upgrade anyone?


Userlevel 7
Badge +19

Hello

 

Can any IFS Customers, Partners or IFS Consultants in the Community elaborate on an upgrade you’ve made from IFS App9 to the Cloud?

We are in App9 UPD14, we are debating to go through App10 or not. What do you think?

We have quite a lot of customizations and configurations and maybe, only maybe, some of them will not be needed after the upgrade. 

 

Thanks!


37 replies

Badge +3

No worries @ShawnBerk. We have only started to work on this in earnest recently (other projects took priority) with a target date of Mar 2025. Our original upgrade for testing was 22R2 and we are currently struggling through our first attempt to lift to 23R2. There should be many fixes, but it seems as though there are many issues with the IFS instructions / documentation on this process so we are creating our own documentation as we discover the limitations.

Userlevel 7
Badge +28

@sjiggins 

@darren.hammond 

 

My apologies for leaving you both hanging, I had nothing to offer at the time and didn’t get back to either of your direct questions.  Hope your experience has been anything better than mine.

Userlevel 7
Badge +28

@BLLBrucemo 

Can I ask Shawn what your biggest pain points are? I was hoping that the later releases would have eased some of the bug issues.

Are you getting reasonable support now from IFS?

 

Sorry to make you wait for a reply, but I have to be a bit more reserved about my criticisms on here as it ruffles too many feathers….I’ll try to keep it general.

 

Pain Points:

  • Anything CRM, the loss of the query builder all the way back from V8 (which is where we’re coming from on the CRM side) is such a huge loss, it hasn’t been overcome
  • Migration - have dedicated a programmer to sorting this out for over a year, getting close
  • Everything else that @JoDe said times 10 plus everything I’ve mentioned in numerous other posts on here.  Nothing has changed significantly really.

The project was put on hold for 2023 essentially and is only now being revisited, that should tell you in a nutshell how the interaction has been from a product maturity and support standpoint.

 

Be prepared to do it all on your own or don’t plan on doing it.

Userlevel 2
Badge +8

@BLLBrucemo  A little off topic.

As a customer coming from a different ERP to the IFS Cloud 22R2. 

At this point having a similar implementation timeline as @ShawnBerk, not live yet.

 

Our biggest painpoints are:

  • Not enough knowledge of the platform. Also from IFS side their teams are still discovering how everything works (Developers & Consultants).
  • Lots of bugs
  • Lots of design mistakes
  • Lots of illogical design decisions
  • A still growing list of limitation (based on the 2 previous issues)
  • Some flip flopping from IFS regarding important subjects (Discontinuing online-SQL, Camunda workflow engine as replacement)
  • Lots of basic functionality that is only present in later versions (23R2+)
  • Playing tug of war with Support and R&D regarding potential blocking issues
  • No maturity in error messages/troubleshooting

 

At this point (22R2) I would not recommend anyone moving to IFS Cloud. 

Userlevel 6
Badge +11

@darren.hammond

@sjiggins

Coming up on 2 years since we made the initial inquiry to IFS on the upgrade….still not live, still working through it.  The newer versions are getting close to what is required, but it has been an arduous road.

Can I ask Shawn what your biggest pain points are? I was hoping that the later releases would have eased some of the bug issues.

Are you getting reasonable support now from IFS?

Userlevel 6
Badge +11

We have bitten the bullet and signed the contract to upgrade from IFS APPS9 to Cloud! Anyone else on the same journey? Am curious on how easy it is to uplift your crims?

Userlevel 1
Badge +6

Just re-read this thread. We have recently started the upgrade from 9 to 10 project that I mentioned above and the golive date in prod is almost a year from now. We have a bunch of customizations (n ~200).

Our biggest reasons not to jump to IFS Cloud directly:

A) upgrading the customizations without having to re-plan every process at once (which would have required waay too much effort. It would be a partial re-implementation with changes needed to many e2e processes and also to other connecting systems).

B) continue using IEE to avoid a big bang project

C) agreement related reasons

We have tried to “cut the elephant to smaller pieces” by doing a technical code upgrade first and acknowledge that there are many continuation projects to do when first in IFS10. These include the integration technique change to using rest api’s, the switch to Aurena UI and some internal component switchovers from older to newer component (like budgeting functionalities).

At the same time it already worries a lot thinking about the possible later Cloud project. How can you have a reasonable business case to justify the project financially? How can you get rid of your customizations if the result is that effectiveness suffers and manual work increases. It sounds like reinventing the wheel when you have to re-implement all your processes (A on the list above) moving from 10 to Cloud.

 

Just an update on my previous comments on this discussion. We have now been live in IFS10upd16 for a month and situation is fairly stabile. The project went on schedule but a lot over budget thanks to f.ex. higher than anticipated work related to keepin the customizations along. We did get rid of some CRIM’s, mostly in areas like HR where we have moved to other solutions. Most of the other CRIM’s we still need because getting rid of them would cause more manual work or getting rid of them would cost more than continue paying for them until the Cloud project starts.

Now the focus is shifting to the above mentioned “continuation projects” where the aim is to pave way for the Cloud version.

One of my main concerns regarding Cloud right now is to have a realistic understanding of the money and resources needed to keep along in the Release-and-update train. There are some good videos here on Community explaining this that I have to look deeper into but in general I’d appreciate less marketing talk and more hard facts about the requirements the Cloud version has to a customer compared to the older Apps versions.

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +28

@darren.hammond 

@sjiggins 

Coming up on 2 years since we made the initial inquiry to IFS on the upgrade….still not live, still working through it.  The newer versions are getting close to what is required, but it has been an arduous road.

Userlevel 4
Badge +11

We INNEX have a customer live coming from APPS9 to Cloud since 2 month.
In case you want to collaborate, feel free to reach out.

Userlevel 6
Badge +11

We are going through the same upgrade consideration process as the original poster Apps9 v17.

We initially were going via Apps10 route, but worked out very expensive with restricted support looming for apps 10.

We are now scoping for the on-prem version of IFS Cloud, with an aggressive timeline of 9 months. The board are looking for us to provide an overview of the business benefit due to the sheer cost and struggling to justify beyond being on a supported release (I don’t like the idea of the business falling so far behind with versions, I know the application will get developed to a point it will get even harder to move!), limiting risk with security patches and mobile functionality!

Added to the problem that we would like to get costing for the asset management module in 9 and IFS have not been able to quote with them pushing cloud so hard it’s very difficult to justify the cost and effort!

Does anyone know from IFS existing 5.5k customer list how many are actually on legacy/ support restricted versions??
 


 

 

Badge +3

We have just started looking at the academy for training and received our first install to start testing with. We have not even got that up and going yet. No real experience with the APP other than sandbox/race environment.

Basically, nothing to report yet.

Badge +1

Hi @ShawnBerk. We are embarking on a similar journey (Apps 9 UPD17 to Cloud). Thank you so much for providing the original 14 points from 9 months ago. I’m wondering if you would be willing to provide an update on how the project has gone for you. Some of the things that you have learned, and especially anything that we should be looking at from an API / customization perspective. Again - thank you so much for your contributions to date!

Hi 

 

How is the progress with your upgrade to cloud?

Badge +3

Hi @ShawnBerk. We are embarking on a similar journey (Apps 9 UPD17 to Cloud). Thank you so much for providing the original 14 points from 9 months ago. I’m wondering if you would be willing to provide an update on how the project has gone for you. Some of the things that you have learned, and especially anything that we should be looking at from an API / customization perspective. Again - thank you so much for your contributions to date!

Userlevel 5
Badge +10

Interesting read...

We are currently looking to upgrade from IFS apps 9 to on prem IFS cloud within the next 4 months... 

We have a prod and dev environment 2 servers each (app server and database server)

How flexible are the licensing with cloud, is it like MS Office licenses - scale up and down as you need?

Hope that’s start of project, not time-line!

 

We were sold licenses based on a 5 year term - also bare in mind what you currently have on perpetual, you may need to pay a uplift in support for them. You’ve got to be careful and is not a 1:1 mapping between Apps9 and Cloud licensing modules - accidents can happen and you could nearly be charged for what you already ‘own.’

 

It is a minefield and caused more than one ‘death by spreadsheet’ moment.

Badge +1

Interesting read...

We are currently looking to upgrade from IFS apps 9 to on prem IFS cloud within the next 4 months... 

We have a prod and dev environment 2 servers each (app server and database server)

How flexible are the licensing with cloud, is it like MS Office licenses - scale up and down as you need?

Userlevel 4
Badge +9

The only server we are sharing right now it is the DB non-prod. Like @ShawnBerk told, all other servers need to be separated.

Our go live is planned for begin December, so we are working already on memory, working and processor optimization.

 

Thanks,

 

Gianni Neves

Userlevel 7
Badge +28

@william.klotz 

I’ll see what I can find that I can share.

Expect that whatever you had for IEE, needs to be twice as good and you can no longer share servers as we did with our non-Prod environments previously.  It is three servers per environment and if they arent close to the recommended specs, performance with Cloud is abysmal.

Userlevel 7
Badge +21

Hi @ShawnBerk and @Asela Munasinghe ,

 

I’ve been following the IFS Application 10 to IFS Cloud upgrade discussions carefully because we have been thinking of upgrading to IFS Cloud potentially in 4Q 2023.   We keep all our servers on-premise and we are looking at replacing our servers in 2023 and I’d like to account for IFS Cloud as part of the server analysis we will be doing in the coming weeks and months.   

 

Do either of you have real world IFS Cloud performance and server configurations as part of your testing?   I’m concerned about memory, processor and network band width on the application server and database servers in particular.   IFS Cloud changing the application server equation with Aurena and I’m assuming the application server will require more resources to provide similar performance to using IEE.

 

Any information you have would be of help.

 

Regards,

William Klotz

Userlevel 1
Badge +6

Just re-read this thread. We have recently started the upgrade from 9 to 10 project that I mentioned above and the golive date in prod is almost a year from now. We have a bunch of customizations (n ~200).

Our biggest reasons not to jump to IFS Cloud directly:

A) upgrading the customizations without having to re-plan every process at once (which would have required waay too much effort. It would be a partial re-implementation with changes needed to many e2e processes and also to other connecting systems).

B) continue using IEE to avoid a big bang project

C) agreement related reasons

We have tried to “cut the elephant to smaller pieces” by doing a technical code upgrade first and acknowledge that there are many continuation projects to do when first in IFS10. These include the integration technique change to using rest api’s, the switch to Aurena UI and some internal component switchovers from older to newer component (like budgeting functionalities).

At the same time it already worries a lot thinking about the possible later Cloud project. How can you have a reasonable business case to justify the project financially? How can you get rid of your customizations if the result is that effectiveness suffers and manual work increases. It sounds like reinventing the wheel when you have to re-implement all your processes (A on the list above) moving from 10 to Cloud.

Userlevel 4
Badge +9

Hi Guys,

We are in the middle of the storm (IFS 9 to Cloud 22R1). It’s been an emotional roller coaster. IFS Cloud is far from been ready. They sold like everything was ready to go (and we have not a lot of customizations), so we decide to go direct to IFS CLOUD. Below, some points:

  1. IFS Cloud is not ready
  2. So many bugs
  3. Worst support ever
    1. Any one of our issues had solutions from IFS. My team and I found the solutions (some with your help guys).
  1. We have a case open for 3 months now, and any solution has been given.
  2. Focus in advanced functions and let many bugs on basic functions.

This list can go far, but the point is, wherever your decision is, your team will be the key of success. Don’t wait for IFS, your expectations need to be as low as possible, frustration, angry and sometimes a little bit of joy.

 

PS. I don’t know if some of you will be at IFS UNLISHED, but if you want to talk, it will be very interesting share our experiences. 

 

Gianni Neves 

Userlevel 1
Badge +6

We are currently planning on starting a Apps9upd17->Apps10upd15 project. The 10-upgrade was first thought around 2019 but it did not provide anything special then so we have done two Apps9 sub-version updates since then instead (you could argue were they worth it). Main driver for the 10-upgarade is keeping up in supported versions and trying to minimize the tech debt. During the Apps10 usage the aim is to do step-by-step integration renewals and transitions to the new UI.

 

The remaining supported life of 6 years until 2028 for Apps10 is not that long when you wonder the business case for the total implementation projects and related work and trouble. Reading the above thread about all the challenges the Cloud brings along it really makes one think is this work with a meaning :D.

Badge +4

@darylslinn , was it your organization’s or IFS’s recommendation to go through App10? 

It was suggested as an option for time and potential cost saving for the first part of the overall upgrade project.

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

@darylslinn , was it your organization’s or IFS’s recommendation to go through App10? 

Userlevel 7
Badge +19

@MikeArbon when you say ‘out of the box setup’ what exactly do you mean? Is it similar to a setup that has quite a lot of customizations and well as integrations with other systems? 

Badge +4

We were advised to go from Apps 9 to Apps 10 because it wouldn’t be a culture shock in moving to the Aurena front end immediately… and from how the upgrade is going we are glad we made that decision.
 

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