Kubota Corp doing computer switch-over...down 20 days

[ruffdog]

This dealer is giving the heads-up on getting your service work done and parts ordered NOW. The first of the year til 1/20/2025 the system will be down. Anyone else hear of this?

 

[j13smiley]

This is crazy to hear in this day in age.

 

[Paystar]

Was at my dealer yesterday picking up my RTV and snow blower and I asked them. This is in northern Ontario Canada.
They have heard nothing and she even got on computer right in front of me and checked all the corporate emails and announcements they get from Kubota and nothing.

 

[RandyT]

This is being talked about in several forums on the internet, but all of them are using the same unverified youtube video source.

 

[RjCorazza]

Messicks sent me an email about this, and according to them it's legit, and happening.

 

[jfsawatzky]

Something doesn’t make sense… I have a number of questions. I work in IT and there’s additional important details to understand… is this planned or unplanned outage and what type of switchover is involved. I can only assume it’s unplanned and involves servers and probably a database(s) and needing to export and potentially transform / load data to the new system. Has a critical server failed and they are waiting for delivery of a new box?
If it’s planned why the need to shut down for 3 weeks? They should run production for longer or have a backup to use while working on the update/ upgrade. If it’s unplanned what is the timeframe based on? And is there not a clean backup they can use in the meantime?
Also, at what level is this occurring? I’d think it would be at a national level as opposed to international… each level should be secure but hackers are resourceful and employees are fallible. Note, I have no idea if they were hacked or not I’m speculating on the 3 week outage.

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

Kubota Tractor sales were up approximately 18% overall in 2024. Maybe they just need a vacation?

 

[bdhsfz6]

Here's the Messicks YouTube video on the subject:

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

The video completely explains the problem and reason at 1:25 to 1:32, When he states what kubota uses for thier software! SAP corporations software.
Used by several large corporation and known for by users as being archaic and not really user friendly. Which was mainly a joke.
Many users see the acronym SAP as the joked around "STOP ALL PROGRESS".
So to me I understand the problem and didn't listen to anything after 1:32 when they stated that the software being used is SAP.

EDIT: SAP is actually a very stable platform, it is the integration to other software packages within the platform that had the hickups.

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

Companies that use SAP software

Fortune 500 Companies That Use SAP

How did SAP technology is a Fortune-500 favorite, climb the ranks in IT solutions, and what makes this humble German vendor distinct from the others? Read more to find out.

www.thomsondata.com

There are more than 700,000 companies in the USA that use SAP. Just thought this google search was interesting enough to post it.

 

[mrmikey]

I used SAP before I retired. It is a very stable platform but as MAX said, it doesn't play nice with pretty much anything else. At least any time I've attempted it. I didn't find it intuitive in the least, once you found out how to think like the programmers it wasn't bad.

 

[jfsawatzky]

Now I understand… SAP is core business software and they probably are running a number of modules.. that team will earn their pay.

 

[riptides]

Use SAP to find out how broken your internal systems and processss really are.

 

[KennJ]

Something doesn’t make sense… I have a number of questions. I work in IT and there’s additional important details to understand… is this planned or unplanned outage and what type of switchover is involved. I can only assume it’s unplanned and involves servers and probably a database(s) and needing to export and potentially transform / load data to the new system. Has a critical server failed and they are waiting for delivery of a new box?
If it’s planned why the need to shut down for 3 weeks? They should run production for longer or have a backup to use while working on the update/ upgrade. If it’s unplanned what is the timeframe based on? And is there not a clean backup they can use in the meantime?
Also, at what level is this occurring? I’d think it would be at a national level as opposed to international… each level should be secure but hackers are resourceful and employees are fallible. Note, I have no idea if they were hacked or not I’m speculating on the 3 week outage.

Yep, I made an order from Messick's today and these warning are all over the place.

I am a manufacturers rep, and one of our major principles changed over from their legacy system to JD Edwards. JDE people had been on site for 6 months preparing and mapping the switchover. they flipped the switch on April 1, and it failed MISERABLY! I was a year before anything started to get even minimal improvement. They couldn't even get a full BOM (bill of materials) to the factory floor! One of my customers' order had an 8 week lead time for an item with no moving parts... it took a year to ship!

If they are migrating software (and especially if they migrate to JDE) 20 days may be wildly optimistic!

 

[TractorTYMe]

I work in heavy equipment rental, and the system we went over to from Windows based to IBM i-series. Which is losely based upon IBM AS400 architecture. Backend screen says Welcome IBM 1980, 2024

 

[rScotty]

I gotta say that anyone can pick the wrong software. Older software actually advertised their "stand alone" ability as a positive feature. That was back before anyone had a clue how important it was going to be for software packages to interact intuitively.

I'm impressed that Kubota is willing to be making such a massive software shift.

And I'm pretty impressed with the tractor we bought from them as well. After almost 20 years, it continues to starts and run just like new.
rScotty