Quick Disclaimer: Comments are from a purely personal perspective!!With the training completed and the testing now under way, the sheer magnitude of this is finally sinking in. Hopefully the chest pains will calm down.Right, this is a huge system, and one with a substantial learning curve; make allowances for this..think months ahead, not weeks. Training was certainly made easier by having someone who knew both Horizon and Symphony. The sessions were very well presented, however the system wasn't fully set up with our primary data export; thus impacting on some of the serials, likewise circulation. I'd be interested to know if anyone else, after the training, set up the system parameters and preferences etc, or did SirsiDynix do this for you?The underpinning architecture at code level seems to drag it's heels somewhat given the nature of how the client software interacts with the server. At every level there seems to be an 'extra' stage; cataloguing, policy formation, serials (not as linear as I initially thought a year ago), acquisitions is a veritable monster, more so if you're using the invoices option.Enterprise? Personally I'd leave this well alone. I'm not privy to the actual costs, but for what you get (a hosted fuzzy logic search engine), there are better products out there. You still need e-library, which you host..so why opt for additional charges? Worth noting; Enterprise does not index dynamically so if someone is looking for the most recent items on the shelf you'd need to use e-library as your primary search.Fresh from the somewhat topical merits of the various migration packages, SirsiDynix really need to get implementation teams out of the office and on to the customer sites here. I'm amazed at just how much we're required to set up. If any of the current customer base are looking at procurement criteria, I can see this being a major issue. Webex sessions have their place; the implementation stage is not one of them. The drive to minimise operating costs at the expense of short term profit will impact on the SD client base if these 'support packages' are a precursor to paying for consultancy charges to meet go live dates etc. Note: PTFS are relentlessly persuing SirsiDynix customers in the UK.The main 'problem' would appear to be that SirsiDynix are now developing what is a 20 year old product and despite the flexibility of some of the source code there must be a limit as to how they can structure this to meet the demands of Library 2.0 et al. Think of using Microsoft Frontpage 98 and looking at the html..dozens of lines of excess code. Then you found Dreamweaver...much more streamlined. Right now cluster patches and updates are added relentlessly in order to get to the 'Dreamweaver' stage. I'd wager that the development teams know how far they can take this without reinventing the product completely, as do Vista Equity.A year ago I advised that it may be worth waiting 12-15 months to determine what lay ahead within the current UK LMS market. In this time PTFA seem to making some inroads and there is the promise of the 'free' system from OCLC. There are financial incentives for those looking to migrate to Symphony. Within the economies of scale this may be the right move for you, however I would advise a thorough investigation of the product. It's certainly worth planning a 8-10 week investigative period of assessment prior to commitment.The final goodbye to the Horizon Mailing List doesn't even merit contemplating. The next few weeks will see the trusty old Bimport scripts being run for the last time, and the much treasured Marcout script running the Authority Records, as part of the final data migration. Current Horizon customers may be using them for a considerable while yet... :)
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