CAMUS to update ERP users in April
March 2, 2006
The Computer Aided Manufacturing User Society (CAMUS) will host regional meetings in April, a way to connect with colleagues who manage manufacturing applications. CAMUS has a heavy tilt toward the MANMAN shop; several hundred companies, at a minimum, still rely on this application, often hosted on HP 3000s.
Terry Floyd, founder of the Support Group, is among the best in the world at tracking the needs and size of the MANMAN community. Now he's joined the CAMUS board of directors, so he has an even keener interest in gathering users who might be migrating from their 3000s, or trying to stay within budget and stay put.
Those users can attend regional meetings on Friday, April 7. RUG Day will take place in meetings in Frankfort, IN (CAMUS Midwest), Austin, TX (CAMUS SouthCentral), Boston, MA (CAMUS Northeast), Fremont, CA (CAMUS Northwest), and Orange County, CA (CAMUS Southwest). "This may be the last year that CAMUS sponsors RUG events," a CAMUS announcement warned, "so it could be your last chance to meet with some of the MANMAN, MK and Maxcim users in your area." You can register online.
Floyd agrees that 2006 is a crucial year for ERP customers to decide if attending a user group meeting is a priority or not.
a cHe's not predicting that CAMUS will go the way of Interex, unable to pay its bills and forced to close up. "We think CAMUS has the financial viability to survive for at least five more years," he said. "Even with dwindling membership. I was glad to get inside of the books and see that we're not in any trouble at all."
But national meetings have been lucky to draw 500 users, "about half vendors and half users," Floyd said. "That's not the kind of base you want to build upon." CAMUS has between 400 and 500 users on its membership rosters, counting those who have gone inactive. Not all are 3000 sites; the OpenVMS world has a good installed base of those ERP apps. But a big chunk of that membership is using MPE/iX.
The user goup's announcement reported that RUG Day will include "a one-hour conference call between the five physical sites, which will include an address from Malcolm Miller, President of CAMUS, as well as presentations on the CAMUS Board’s intentions for 2006 and beyond. Learn about plans for the First Annual 'LAST CAMUS Conference' this summer in Northern California. After the successful 2005 CAMUS Conference, the theme will again be Homesteading and Migrating — because remaining users of MANMAN, MK, and Maxcim are about equally divided between the two alternatives and experience is growing with both."