Sizing, Considerations, and Recommendations 67
4. A professional sizing response package will be returned to the IBM ERP
consultant or business partner within five business days.
Request Document ID 8651
Once completed in its entirety, the questionnaire is then faxed to the IBM/ERP
Pre-Sales Sizing Center. Professionals in the sizing center will analyze the input
and provide an estimate of server sizing based on the performance data we have
to date. For unusual sizing requests the sizing center may engage the IBM/J.D.
Edwards International Competency Center or J.D. Edwards performance experts.
Once the analysis is complete a comprehensive document summarizing the
output of a sizing analysis is delivered to the requester.
The Sizing Tool
The IBM/J.D. Edwards International Competency Center is comprised of a group
of experienced professionals dedicated to providing high quality sales support for
IBM platforms running J.D. Edwards software. In addition to a Competency
Center Manager, the team includes server platform technical specialists, a sizing
specialist, a network specialist, and a marketing specialist. The tool used for
sizing the OneWorld and IBM Netfinity solution was developed by the
Competency Center team. This tool is based on an analysis of the performance
characterization data collected during the performance benchmark test runs for
the IBM Netfinity servers.
The current tool is a user-based sizing tool and is designed to take user counts
as collected by the sizing questionnaire then creating a reasonable estimate of
resource needed for each server platform. Certain minimum requirements are
built in to the tool. These are discussed in 5.6.2, “Sizing Guidelines” .
5.6.2 Sizing Guidelines
We must keep in mind that while pre-sales sizing is a very important phase of any
OneWorld sale, the actual amount of money spent on server hardware in a typical
implementation may be a relatively small portion of the entire package. We
believe that for every dollar spent on OneWorld software a customer might expect
to spend a dollar on server hardware, a dollar on PC upgrades, a dollar on
network upgrades, and from three to four dollars on services. These numbers will
vary by customer, but they demonstrate the fact that the cost of the server may
comprise from 10% to 30% of the entire project cost.
In many situations we have seen the issue of pre-sales sizing take on a role much
more important than the amount of money spent on this portion of the package
can justify.
Now you can access the IBM Netfinity OneWorld sizing tool online via the
following URL:
http://www.ibm.com/erp/jdedwards/sizings/index.html
Remember to answer the questions as carefully as possible so that the IBM
Sizing Center may provide you with accurate sizing information.
Netfinity OneWorld Sizing Tool Online