LawsonGuru Blog
Thought-Provoking Commentary for the Lawson Software Community
Infor10 Lawson S3
I’ve told you before that Lawson’s acquisition by Infor would be interesting. Our first taste of this new combination is Infor10 Lawson S3 (quite a mouthful, isn’t it?). I’ve been attending various product briefings and user groups, perusing the documentation, participating in a lead adopter project, and receiving my usual eyewitness reports and unsubstantiated rumors. What’s caught my attention?
Workspace = Game Changer If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. Infor Workspace is built on Microsoft SharePoint, a pervasive solution running in many organizations. Using Infor Workspace, you can switch from Infor SyteLine ERP system running on a local server to Infor Expense Management in the cloud, or to Infor EAM deployed at another site. The user experience stays consistent across all of the applications. Now with Lawson S3 10, it’s not only functionally superior to Lawson Portal, but it’s also simply gorgeous.
It’s Complicated Perhaps that is the price you pay for progress. If you’ve been around Lawson as long as I have, you know that, with each new version, things get just a bit more complicated. That is to be expected, but simply put, Lawson S3 10 is a beast. Under the covers, yes it’s still Lawson, so you still have GEN and the Lawson Environment. But you also need a Landmark runtime environment to support Process Automation, which replaces ProcessFlow. You need Infor10 Workspace to replace Lawson Portal. You need SharePoint. If you use Lawson Smart Office, you need that too. Trust me, if you’re a small shop, it might not be beneficial to learn, install, and/or maintain all of this yourself. You’ll want some help. I think a hosted/cloud-delivered version might be in your future.
MKS No More? If you’re on the Windows platform, you might be familiar with Lawson Unix Utilities (LUU) as a replacement for MKS. Lawson S3 10 appears to have altogether removed MKS as a supported option.
LID, You’re (Almost) History It’s been a decade now that we’ve been hearing that LID was gone. This time it’s (mostly) true.
LAUA, You’re (Definitely) History Seriously.
With “Mongoose”, Wither Landmark? Infor has been touting its Mongoose development framework. As part of Infor’s acquisition of Lawson, does this signal the beginning of end for Landmark?
It’s the Apps, Stupid I’ve frequently guilty of harping that Lawson is supposed to be an applications company, not a technology company, not a middleware company. This release is no exception. Again, it’s mostly about the technology, and getting you into the Infor portfolio of products.
LawsonGuru Blog 
Wow… it really dos sound complicated. Good news for hosting companies, I suppose.
Microsoft Utilities and SDK for Unix beats LUU and it’s free, why doesn’t Lawson use that?
LUU is indeed a wrapper over Microsoft UNIX utilities.
John – I have a few questions we are going to Lawson Version 10 next year. We just made a hugh purchase for MKS – we will still be able to use that correct?
Also when a client goes to Lawson version 10 what version are the following components at:
LBI
PFI – replaced by Landmark?
Lawson EMSS
Portal – replaced by Infor10 Workspace?
Lawson Design Studio
Lawson LS Security – I believe is still at 9??
Lawson Environment
Lawson Finance Suite
Sharepoint
Thanks.
– You can still use MKS if that is your preference; you can also use Microsoft Unix subsystem or cygwin (free/open source)
– LBI is independent and has no direct reliance on LSF or v10, however if you use DSSO (distributed single-sign on), you will want to make sure your LBI version is compatible with Lawson v10
– PFI is replaced by Landmark-based application called “Infor Process Automation” (or “IPA”) — name changed from Lawson Process Automation (LPA)
– IPA requires Landmark runtime, which is “system foundation” for Landmark (i.e. LSF is stack 1, Landmark is stack 2)
– with the Landmark runtime, you know now have two security databases (Landmark and LSF), and this is bridged (federated) between the two stacks using Infor Security Service (ISS) and supports various security/authentication combinations (Kerberos, LS as STS, and LS as STS with AD Federation Services)
– EMSS is independent, you can usually upgrade to latest version (v10.x) and it will work with prior (9.0.x) applications; see EMSS install guide for supported combinations
– Portal is still (technically) same technology, but operates as a frame within “Infor Ming.le Foundation” (previous Workspace); some of the UI elements, e.g. login/logout, bookmarks, etc. are now handled by Ming.le. Since it is now part of the Infor Ming.le Foundation, supports additional browsers.
– Infor Ming.le Foundation (previously Infor Workspace) runs as a web application installed in SharePoint 2010
– Design Studio still works (mostly) for Form UI, but Portal Page support was still not quite ready as of latest release
– LS Security – all users need to be assigned to LS; LAUA no longer an option
– Lawson environment (LSF) is 10.x, slightly but not significantly different than LSF 9.0.x; in addition to the removal of LAUA, most changes are internal to support running as part of Workspace and the ISS (Infor Security Service)
– Finance Suite; you will be upgrading to v10 applications as part of the Infor v10 upgrade; while v9.0.1 (certain minimum MSP required) applications can run on v10, they are not supported except as the source for the applications upgrade.
Very good post, which I linked to from another blogpost on the future of LBI. We are also quite bearish there as well, in light with ION BI. It’s readable at: http://dataminersmining.com/future-of-lbi/
If I understand this article, to upgrade for Lawson 9.0 to S10 I need to purchase and implement MS Sharepoint to use the Workspace?
My OS is AIX.
You can use (free) Sharepoint Foundation 2010.
Hi John,
From where I can get the S10. I need to integrate Lawson with SP 2010. Will S10 go with it?
I have a question….. is the CASE tool still available in V10 AND if so, will it/can it be accessed via LID?
Yes, and yes. Based on environment security defined in Lawson Security (LS) for the desired user.
thanks a LOT for the info(r) and the quick response.
i have a followup quiestion. Must one be an administrator (Role?) to get access to LID in v10? seems like i heard there was a security setting expressly for that purpuse such that a user can access LID, but someone else told me you had to have administrator access.
I think you really mean “access to certain features via LID, such as ability to use lapm to access a form”. That is restricted to users (based on having security access to the pgmdef environment utility) and is run in what Lawson terms “developer mode”, with no security applied.
i want to write a bunch of interface programs extracting data from Lawson.
a potential client was told by a large consulting firm that the way to get data out of Lawson was to extract the data using SQL and then run it through another program to reformat the data to the specs of the importing client i countered with using pgmdef, led/lx, loccmp, the animator, and (yes) lapm. in addition, i told the potential client that i was pretty darn sure i would be more prolific than the SQL/.NET suggestion they had received. they countered with “you can’t do those things without LID and to use LID you had to have administrator status and you don’t want to let that cowboy be an administator”. I don’t want to say they are wrong if they are, in fact, correct. I need better information. in addition, the client (new to lawson) had not even been told that Lawson had a CASE tool and felt a little miffed. help?
Hello Experts,
I am new to S3 & i need to understand the architecture on Infor lawson. We are having AIX boxes & database as SQL
Please let me know , if there is any simple documents which will help understand the technology.
Thanks Vishal
I am new to this. Can someone help me in steps on how to delete a batch from AP25.1 which was created with NULL values.
Please address your question on lawsonguru.com/forums.aspx
We did what your stating, we are a small shop with Lawson, went from rel 9 on premise to rel 10 in the Lawson cloud. MAJOR mistake. Access is restricted, applying CTP is scheduled, usually 2 weeks out, Heck we wanted to reboot our Test system they scheduled it out 10 days. Best bet is to find a Lawson Technical and highly skilled and pay them, sill cost less in the long run and save time in maint. And the Tunnel slowed things to a crawl. when downloading say a good size report into excel from the cloud to the Local PC. Testing LBI crystal reports was near impossible. we finally we able to pull down a backup DB from the Cloud backup nightly to run BI reports and other reports.