Background: The IT situation at the beginning

Background: The IT situation at the beginning
 "If it isn’t broken don’t fix it" is a common motto amongst business management when discussing the need to replace major business assets, be it production line machinery, a forklift in the warehouse, or a delivery truck. When it comes to technology such as computer software it’s even harder because management is not always clear as to whether it is a business asset or not. Finally…why replace the good old business software systems with a new ERP system when today’s needs seem to be met with the current systems..?


One major reason to replace outdated software is that companies cannot afford to wait until major systems break down or fail to deliver. When that happens it is way too late.

That’s why in 2005 Colmobil decided to review its IT situation and create a roadmap for the next decade. As they began this task, Colmobil's CEO, Zvika Pollak, realized that some organizational change was required. Colmobil had developed, grown, and nourished their system over 20 years. A great deal of thought and resources had gone into it, and it was meeting the current requirements. The downside of this commitment to the system was that they weren't able to objectively engage in the task of evaluating a significant change. Leading the evaluation and change required a CIO who was able to look at the task objectively. A strategic approach to the creation of this roadmap was a necessity. Colmobil needed someone with the basic IT leadership skills and whose experience and focus were very business-oriented and less on traditional IT. To fulfill this need, Gil Katz was recruited and the CIO position was upgraded to the executive management board.




(If this next paragraph means nothing to you - or gives you a headache - skip to the last sentence.)
At the time Colmobil was creating their roadmap for the next decade, its business software was running on three Alpha computers. The Alphas’ were originally designed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). DEC was later acquired by Compaq and then Compaq merged with HP. One of the Colmobil Alphas’ was running a specialized warehouse management system with an RDB database and an OpenVMS operating system. The other two were running a business application written in MUMPS programming language, in a cache environment, with the OpenVMS operating system. Although it seems strange today, in the late 80's over a third of Digital’s minicomputers worldwide – PDP-11, micro-VAX and VAX - were running applications in Digital Standard MUMPS (DSM). However, this unique combination of software and hardware had "OBSOLETE" written all over it by the time Colmobil was making these changes.

The business application Colmobil was running had its roots in the 1980’s timeframe. The main business application was initially developed by a software vendor named Nikuv. By the end of the 80's Colmobil had purchased the rights to develop and change the code of that application. They hired developers and set up an in-house team to continuously modify and develop new functionality to Colmobil's specifications. Of course this caused a divergence between Colmobil’s’ version and Nikuvs’ upgrades. As a result the Colmobil version, specific to Colmobil requirements, and the Nikuv version, more generic to meet multiple companies’ requirements, drifted increasingly apart.

The next posts will deal with the different aspects beyond the IT situation and the complexity involved in making the decision “to SAP or not to SAP”...

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