Moving to The Cloud

Infor M3 has taken the approach to move into the cloud by releasing  major version of M3 Cloud Edition (M3 CE) in early 2018. With this release Infor is encouraging customers to move as well, highlighting the key benefits that they are gaining.

M3 Big Picture (courtesy  of Infor)

Key Highlights

• Single Version 
• You will always have one version across your environments. 
• Incremental developments.
• Continuous delivery of new features. 
• To stay "Super Current".
• Automatic Updates
• No more upgrades. You will receive recent updates automatically to make sure the system is up-to-date. 
• Controlled through Toggles and Parameters not to have impact on existing business processes.  
• Scalable
• As it is in the cloud, by nature, we don't have to worry about the load of the system. We can scale the system to fit into out load. 
• Secure
• Infor is making sure the security factor by implementing 3 SD concepts. 
• Secure by Default.
• Secure by Design. 
• Secure by Deployment.
• Extensible 
• Ability to extends existing feature to suit your needs. 

Having said that, practically you will have challenges when providing the solution. For an example, you know the relationship between the hammer and the nail. depending on size of the nail, you have to choose the type or size of the hammer. Like wise, our solutions has to be adjusted accordingly the Cloud concepts. 

However, as the time moves on,  Infor M3 CE will mature to the level where these challenges become insignificant.  

Single Tenant Vs Multi Tenant

In the Cloud, we are talking about Multi-Tenancy.  In short, Multi Tenant is, the System is shared with multiple organizations(tenants), as shown in below diagram.

Single-Tenant Vs Multi-Tenant (Courtesy of  https://www.peoplefluent.com/blog/learning/single-tenant-lms-vs-multi-tenant-lms-security)

For M3 same multi-tenant (MT) principle applies and separation is based on the Tenant ID. The individual organization will have separate Tenant ID, which make sure no overlapping will happens with other tenants.

M3 Solutions for The Cloud

As we are more used to providing solution for M3 On-prem or Single Tenant, working with MT environment may be a paradigm shift. Because, We have to work with the certain constrains, selective technology and tools. 

For an example, we cannot run SQL commands, we used to execute in On-prem version, in MT environment. For me it is hard to work without SQL (similar to the feeling that my both hands were tied and ask to develop) , but due to this constrain I have to think about differently.  

What is next

M3 world is changing and Infor is investing in M3.  We should be ready.

I'm planning publish few posts with regards to M3 MT technical solution in future.

Breaking the Silence

After so many silence months, started to write.....!

It is almost  one and half year since my last post. During the time I was in a 13.4 upgrade project. In this project I worked with Info and working as Infor Technical Project Manager.

The project went  on exactly one year (plus two months PGL) and it was a upgrade from M3 10.1 to 13.4. This client owned the largest M3 data base ever. It was 13.5 TB in size. Back end is running on IBM iSeries sever.

Additionally they had

1. 200+ MAK Mods.
2. 220+ Jscripts.
3. 220+ M3 Web Services.
4. 640+ Miciost SQL Server Reports.
5. 55+ External Interfaces.
6. 40+ StreamServe modifications.
7. 10 MEC developments.

My responsibilities were make sure all the above developments upgrades to M3 13.4 and planning the UAT.

During the peek of upgrade there were 20 Technical Consultants from 3 different regions (Egypt, Philippine and Sri Lanka).

It was quite challenging and but interesting project. 

What next:

Currently I'm over seeing a M3 multi-tenant (M3 MT) implementation, and hoping to write posts about M3 MT concepts and technologies.