As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.
One of our major research focus areas is Applications Modernization and Migrations. As I wrote here “After 25 years of cloud applications, it is shocking how many customers are stuck with client/server and even mainframe applications. We look at why this is so, and the massive opportunity to automate and streamline migrations.”
I have been especially focused on a series of tools which can help automate various steps – code conversion, data conversion etc. – that are common in SAP migrations from the on-prem ECC to the more modern S/4HANA product.
To get a 360 degree view on the topic I am inviting customers and partners across various vendors to describe their upgrade and migration experiences
I was pleased to host Alex Ivkocik, CIO at CDF Corp to discuss his recent experience moving to the IFS Cloud 23R1 version.
He sets the stage describing CDF’s industrial and consumer goods packaging products and his surround third-party applications around the core IFS functionality. He then describes IFS’s legacy versions and planned future path including a promise to keep the application “evergreen” with more frequent, smaller updates instead of typically more traumatic major releases.
I particularly enjoyed his broader commentary on his upgrade philosophy and approach – how he negotiated with his management and broader organization a 3 year upgrade cycle, how he minimizes functional scope changes during such upgrades (he does praise the fact that IFS is expanding the core to incorporate country localizations, AI, IoT etc) and why he likes the “one throat to choke” project management approach around upgrades. He discusses several other upgrade “best practices” he has developed through his career.
We also spend some time on the hype around “moving to the cloud” and how he nets it out to “show me the money”.
A goldmine of upgrade guidance in around 25 minutes. As a bonus, he also spends time around assyst and Poka, two products IFS has acquired and is in the process of integrating.
