Thank you so far and background for: Initial Estimate guideline f or a straight green-screen Axiant migration

[VISSERS,WILBERT (HP-NewZealand,ex1)]

Blue, Mark, Glenn, Jon, Bob, John, Andrew, Christina, Stephen

Thank you very much for helping out.    Quick+Eloquence, new contacts,
MPE->Windows for printing, batch jobs, thank you.

I thought I'd share the background to what we're doing, and will let you
know how we go:

Here goes. 

We have been scoping the following options, looking at Total Cost of
Ownership over the next 10 years, ie business drivers, migration, support,
risks, opportunities, future change expected. 

*	Migration of the current application to:
		Unix - For comparison only and not being recommended in this
case as
			all our Customer's other apps are in Windows
	      Windows/2000 - This environment preferred at this stage, with
requests
			to have both green-screens and windows-screens
			which means either Quick+Eloquence if just-green
screens initially/quickly
			or Axiant if both initially
*	Full rewrite - For comparison only and not being recommended
*	Migration of core components to Windows/2000 with other parts
replaced by ERP 
		- this is a future option not attractive straight away but
still possible -
		- currently consider best to get to Windows first then
evolve, not do both -
*	Migration to ERP + ERP provider doing customisation 
		- strong competitor option so other options need to be good
value
*	Do nothing till early 2006 then decide 
		- timing not correct for Customer, needs 2004 or 2005
		- due to own reasons not technical ones.

At this stage it looks very much like the total cost of migrating the
existing (good) application to Windows will be around half to a third the
cost of migrating to an ERP, that is after all is said and paid for from the
Customer's business end.  Plus a chunk lower total cost over 10 years.  This
comes down to the efficiency of Powerhouse as it doesn't apply if other
toolsets were to be used, in this case that is.  This gives our Customer a
better choice:  of doing BOTH 'competitive advantage / local things' in
Powerhouse in future, plus evolving to the some ERP modules as they show
value,  instead of living with the downside of just one or the other.  

So wish us luck that this is a match with what our Customer needs.  Board
meeting in late November, project of some sort in mid 2004 / 2005

Wilbert