CSI/SyteLine 10…now with 100% more Infor OS?

CSI/SyteLine 10 finally coming to market!

So in probably the most important part of the recent SUN Mid-Atlantic User Group meeting held on 11/02/2018 in Cranberry, PA was the discussion on CSI/SyteLine 10, including more details on its feature set and upcoming release. As of this writing, GA on CSI/SyteLine 10 is now slated for January 2019. According to Infor’s Product Management team present that day, CSI/SyteLine 10 is currently in a limited release with certain customers, mainly to keep support calls to a minimum and give time for Infor Campus training to catch up and get as much information and training ready as possible.

More details were also revealed on the technical changes and aspects, which I will be pulling together for a second post later this week, however the point of this post is for a possible area of contention for the upgrade process: the requirement of Infor OS to upgrade to CSI/SyteLine 10. 

Infor OS now a requirement for CSI/Syteline 10 usage

For myself, the biggest announcement to come out of the group meeting is that the purchase and installation of Infor OS is required for migration to CSI/SyteLine 10. Note I said ‘migration to’, not ‘usage of’. At this point, it is NOT a requirement to use Infor OS to interface with CSI/SyteLine, however that may become a possibility in the future. Unfortunately, you will still need to stand up the service; you may never need to use the service, but it definitely has to have its hooks set up into SyteLine. So bottom line, this requirement is currently what I would consider an ‘upgrade tax’ to get to CSI/SyteLine 10. Beyond any needed infrastructure, migration costs, costs to move to Mongoose Reporting if you are not currently on 9.x, and so on, you will now need to purchase and install Infor OS on top of it. 

Now, in Infor’s defense, they do have a free, 25-user license of Infor OS that you could use as well, however it was not fully established in my questions if Infor OS licensing is a 1:1 ratio to CSI/SyteLine Transaction User licenses; so it is quite possible that you will only be able to use Infor OS Free for sites 25 users or smaller. Also, Infor OS is available as a SaaS, meaning you would not need to invest in on-premise resources to run everything. More to come on that development. 

I should also note, this is an across the board requirement, meaning this will be needed regardless if you are running on-prem or in the cloud. However, if you so happen wish to move to the cloud offering, I have a strong suspicion there will be subscription packages coming out that include both Infor OS and CSI/Syteline licensing. Just a hunch.  

Options…?

So there IS hope, but I would strongly suggest making our collective voices heard to corporate sooner rather than later. An upcoming meeting with the higher-ups at Infor HQ will be happening shortly, and discussions on cost and rollout  for the Infor OS will be discussed during this time. Many in the CSI/SyteLine Product Management group appear to be listening to the complaints we had on Friday and elsewhere, and will be fighting to give customers as much of a reprieve as possible, yet we should make sure our voices are heard directly as well. In the end, until the licensing numbers come out, what the cost of this upgrade tax will be is unknown.