mtm@igor.philips.com (Marie McCall) (01/29/90)
*PLEASE HELP ME CONVINCE THE CONTROLLER SUN IS THE WAY TO GO, NOT IBM!!*
We are currently considering purchasing a Sun/4 to run interactive A/P,
G/L, labor distribution, job cost system, and Fixed Assets. We are
looking for a company which is similar to ours that has already done this.
We are a research laboratory for a Fortune 23 company. We have
approximately 12,000 G/L accounts and do about 120,000 A/P transactions
per year. Although we do R&D we also resemble an electronic manufacturing
operation and deal with cost accounting. We would greatly appreciate the
opportunity to talk with any operation with any similarities. Thank you in
advance.
Marie T. McCall | | Phone: (914) 945 - 6355
Philips Laboratories | | Fax : (914) 945 - 6375
345 Scarborough Road | | Email: {uunet!philabs!mtm} or
Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510 | | {mtm@philabs.philips.com}hart@decwrl.dec.com (Howard C. Hart) (02/15/90)
In article <4531@brazos.Rice.edu> mtm@igor.philips.com (Marie McCall) writes: >X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 16, message 13 of 18 > >*PLEASE HELP ME CONVINCE THE CONTROLLER SUN IS THE WAY TO GO, NOT IBM!!* > >We are currently considering purchasing a Sun/4 to run interactive A/P, >G/L, labor distribution, job cost system, and Fixed Assets. We are Unfortunetly, I'd tend to argue the other way. I'm no fan of IBM's, but the one thing they do do right is transaction processing and accounting. Sun fails pretty miserably in that department. We've tryed to get some kind of decent accounting out of our Suns via the UNIX supplied sa command. Sun just recently fixed it in 4.0.3, and it still chokes when it finds the nobody user with group ID less than zero. What accounting it does do is questionable. You can't save stats on a daily or hourly basis since it only logs in the start and end of any process. That means if you do 3 day batch job like we do, you wind up with zero CPU utilization for two days, and 5000 CPU minutes (in a 1440 minute day) for the last day. Up to now, we have'nt found any third party software outfits that offer accounting packages. If you find any, I'd like to know. Howard C. Hart UUCP:{sun!sunncal,pyramid}!leadsv!laic!nova!hart
david@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov (David Robinson) (02/16/90)
In article <5011@brazos.Rice.edu> nova!hart@decwrl.dec.com (Howard C. Hart) writes: <X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 34, message 13 <In article <4531@brazos.Rice.edu> mtm@igor.philips.com (Marie McCall) writes: <>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 16, message 13 of 18 <> <>*PLEASE HELP ME CONVINCE THE CONTROLLER SUN IS THE WAY TO GO, NOT IBM!!* <> <>We are currently considering purchasing a Sun/4 to run interactive A/P, <>G/L, labor distribution, job cost system, and Fixed Assets. We are < <Unfortunetly, I'd tend to argue the other way. I'm no fan of IBM's, but <the one thing they do do right is transaction processing and accounting. <Sun fails pretty miserably in that department. As a point of fact, Sun uses an IBM to do their MIS processing. They used to use an HP 3000 but upgraded last year and lost a bunch of money. I would have to agree that there is just not enough good MIS software for a Sun out there. David Robinson david@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov Internet {decwrl,usc,ames}!elroy!david UUCP Disclaimer: No one listens to me anyway!
clh@uunet.uu.net (Chris Hermansen) (02/17/90)
In article <5011@brazos.Rice.edu> nova!hart@decwrl.dec.com (Howard C. Hart) writes: >X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 34, message 13 > >In article <4531@brazos.Rice.edu> mtm@igor.philips.com (Marie McCall) writes: >>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 16, message 13 of 18 >> >>*PLEASE HELP ME CONVINCE THE CONTROLLER SUN IS THE WAY TO GO, NOT IBM!!* >> >>We are currently considering purchasing a Sun/4 to run interactive A/P, >>G/L, labor distribution, job cost system, and Fixed Assets. We are > >Unfortunetly, I'd tend to argue the other way. I'm no fan of IBM's, but >the one thing they do do right is transaction processing and accounting. >Sun fails pretty miserably in that department. We've tryed to get some >kind of decent accounting out of our Suns via the UNIX supplied sa >command. [Stuff deleted] Umm, Mr. Hart, I don't think Ms. McCall is talking about system accounting. The sa utilities certainly aren't much good at transaction processing, though :-) There are all kinds of third party systems for A/P, G/L, and Job Costing. They run on all kinds of computers, too. Many of those packages are in fact PC based, and therefore are not particularly oriented toward transaction processing. I would be willing to bet a pizza that most commercial UN*X installations (ie, XE*X) exist solely to address these problems. I'd suggest having a good look in the Catalyst catalog for this kind of stuff. As well, Sun makes(?) a project management facility called SunTrac, but this may be oriented too much toward software projects. Chris Hermansen Timberline Forest Inventory Consultants Voice: 1 604 733 0731 302 - 958 West 8th Avenue FAX: 1 604 733 0634 Vancouver B.C. CANADA uunet!ubc-cs!van-bc!tacitus!clh V5Z 1E5 clh@tfic.bc.ca -or- Chris_Hermansen@mtsg.ubc.ca May you work in an interesting place.