Question

Epicor forcing everyone to the cloud?


We are seeing rumors of the highlighted statement below. I attended insights 2022, and did not hear this in any sessions. Did anyone else hear this?

 

At the Insights Conference this year, Epicor informed everyone that they're requiring the move to Cloud based servers by 2024. Epicor said “If you are not in cloud, have a plan to get there”. Very bluntly, they informed us that all users not in the cloud by 2024 would be placed on sustained support. They made it very clear this was going to be fully enforced to all clients.


7 replies

Userlevel 1

I am definitely interested to hear this answer. This is the first that I am hearing this rumor and it causes me a lot of concern.

 

I attended Insights this year too.  Epicor is not forcing the cloud - they are forcing the web UI

 

@ayrin.hilbert is correct, there is no requirement to move to cloud, but the Classic forms will be removed from Kinetic in the 2024.1 release.

Userlevel 3

I find the move to force Kinetic more of an issue than Cloud.  Everyone I work with is 100% adamant that they completely dislike the Kinetic interface.  It is ugly, unreadable, hard to navigate, and a barrier to productive use of Epicor.  I can’t count the number of times people have asked to get rid of the nag message to try the new interface that shows at the top of most screens.  Nobody likes it or will use it. The few screens that are forced to be Kinetic (mostly print dialog screens) are really painful and I get a lot of complaints.  IMHO I say don’t force it unless you fix it. 

Userlevel 3

I heard very clearly from the big stage that Epicor is not forcing people to the cloud, but that they are now recognizing that there are scenarios where it makes sense to remain on prem.  

There are pieces of truth mid applied here. 
 

Epicor embraces their cloud, private cloud and on-prem. they realize less than 10% of their customers need to be on prem. They are NOT forcing move to cloud.  
 

2024 is when they would like all on kinetic screens. Does that mean you have to be there?  No.  Does it mean you eventually might be left behind in upgrades?  Maybe.

2 years is a long way off in the life of software. While 100% of kinetic screens might be done it does not mean they are 100% compatible/comparable to classic. In two years, maybe they will be. If they are not, be prepared to do a hard analysis of why you need to stay classic. I like this to a new go live.   Just cause you want it doesn’t mean you need or should do it. We will be spending the next two years looking at these screens. Our first step will be from 10.2.700 to kinetic 2023 with classic screens. We will continue to document the difference between classic and kinetic and determine how to move forward. 

The company I work for is starting their conversion to Epicor Kinetic from a different ERP system.  While going thru this process and contracting, Epicor offered us both On Prem and Hosted on their servers.  Our management wants to make sure that we control the data and the system update process.  Since we could not control the timing of the system updates, we started to think more On Prem would be the best for us.  So in talking with some consulting companies to help with this conversion we found that there are a handful of 3rd party hosting companies that will/can  host Kinetic (with Epicor’s blessing).  In the presentations at Insights I heard that they were trying to do a web technology shift for the software but not forcing people to be hosted.  Our rep admitted that there are situations where companies cannot be hosted due to bad internet connections and very low bandwidth on top of security concerns.  He did not see any time line of On Prem going away soon.  During this conversion we are taking 3 of our 4 locations on to a hosted version of Kinetic, the 4th site is in China and may have to be On Prem (when we get to that phase) since we have not found a good hosting company over there. 

Reply