Lawson environment 9.0 available Mid Dec??

Here's what I picked up:

- By bundling Websphere and DB2 (and no longer supporting Apache/Tomcat), the 9.0 "System Foundation" (nee Environment/Technology) continues to cement Lawson's relationship with IBM. I see this as a positive, and see it as Lawson taking another page out of the Microsoft playbook: be the best product on a given platform, foregoing the other platforms in the process.

- I think a lot of smaller clients will be initially taken aback by Lawson's "one-time charge" for the IBM bundled products, but they'll eventually come around since it will be cheaper than jumping off the Lawson ship.

- The biggest impact (and one which hasn't been addressed) will be the back-version support. Lawson's historical position has been to support the two most recent releases. Given the recent 8.1 release of and the impending 9.0 release, this means that Lawson will begin decommission of 8.0.x environments--sooner rather than later. Not something that clients will want to hear. On the positive side, it does move clients closer to Landmark!

- And, yes, LID will continue to work--even with 9.0--although you can't take advantage of the new Lawson Security enhancements.

Yes, Lawson may decommission 8.0.x releases by next year

Regards
Ganesh .R

8.0.x Environment (Unix/Windows not iSeries) Decommission dates:

8.0.2 - March 30, 2007
8.0.3 - July 31, 2008