Epicor Software Corp. has introduced a set of new features and functions for its venerable Vantage ERP product that more than doubles the number of concurrent users that can be supported by the software.
In an announcement at National Manufacturing Week in Chicago yesterday, Epicor said that Vantage, designed for make-to-order and mixed-mode manufacturers and distributors, can now handle as many as 2,000 concurrent users, compared with about 1,000 before the enhancements.
Rodney E. Winger, senior director of product marketing, manufacturing and supply chain management at Epicor, said that tests are showing that the software can scale even beyond the 2,000 level. "We did a lab test with Microsoft at the 3,000 level," he said in an interview with Managing Automation. "We will be doing another test at the 6,000-concurrent-user level in October."
The new features and functions, technically part of a service pack for Vantage 8.03, the current release of the software, include support for Microsoft's .NET 3.0 and Windows Vista products as well SQL Server 2005. Winger said that all major third-party software products that work with Vantage, such as IQS in quality management, have been brought up to current release levels using Epicor's business process integration tool, called Service Connect.
On the functional side, the service pack includes enhancements for Vantage's core manufacturing and supply chain capabilities, particularly in the areas of planning, scheduling, and production management. Enhanced global finite scheduling, for example, provides a real-time assessment of present and short-term plant or warehouse capacity as defined by on-hand resources.
Another key new supply chain management feature, Winger noted, is called Phantom Pack. This feature, which addresses export shipments in the order-to-pack and manifest shipping process, provides what Epicor calls "the ability to multiple case pack all items on an order" for fast pack processing.
Epicor is also making available to Vantage users an on-demand sales tax management service it introduced in the fourth quarter of last year for its enterprise-class customers. Called Tax Connect, the Web services-based sales tax automation product, now fully integrated with Vantage, can help manufacturers keep compliant with jurisdiction- and commodity-specific taxation rules.
Introduced in the early 1990s, Vantage, which was re-written in 2005 to support a service-oriented architecture, is used by about 3,500 companies currently, Winger said.
Vantage users will hear more about the new enhancements to the products at Perspectives 2007, Epicor's annual customer conference, Oct. 14-17 in Orlando, FL.