In the second of a series of posts on the subject of Global Single Instances I wanted to talk about how many you should have and how your ability to ramp up WAN capacity is a key consideration.
Oddly, as the subject implies, you should only aim to have one GSI. Of course Part 1 of the series debunked that idea right away. The idea is to…
Consolidate your business systems and business information to as few places and platforms as possible.
In other words, as many as you need, but no more than that…
In many conversations with many customers over the years it is amazing what criteria are perceived as valid for deciding how many instances of their business system they’ll deploy.
So, to help frame the discussion let’s assume we’re starting with a multinational company.
For me there is only one main consideration in figuring out how many SI’s (lets leave the “Global” off for the time being) you need and where they should be hosted.
Choose number of (single) instances and their hosting location based on your ability to ramp up your (intercontinental) WAN capacity – including redundancy - to meet the requirements.
You (and your network provider) need to be able to (afford to) do this in a timeframe that matches the project timeframes otherwise you’re sunk.
This can get interesting when;
- You plan to implement the system for multiple global geographies (APAC, EMEA, Americas)
- Rollout is planned to “exotic” locations (read “poorly served by networks”)
- Shop floor and shipping (or other revenue-side or customer critical elements) are in-scope
So what are flavours that other folks have chosen?
| # of “Single” Instances | Coverage |
| 1 | Global |
| 2 | Americas (or Europe or APAC), Rest-of-World (ROW) |
| 3 | Americas APAC EMEA |
| 4 | N America S America Europe APAC |
As a rule of thumb – more than 4 and for me it doubtful that you are really looking at Single Instances…
Also as a hint. Considering splitting GSIs by business process (e.g. Global Financials, regional Manufacturing). Don’t bother – that concept is just not worth the integration and data integrity hassle.
Feedback, questions and in particular criticism is more than welcome.
Andrew
