Top > Business and Finance > Stocks > Technology > Software and Programming > CLFY (Clarify, Inc.)
A little bit off
by: martysirkin 1150 of 1150
I've never posted to any of the stock boards before, but this note is filled with enough FUD that I just wanted to state a few facts for anyone reading who might believe what they read above.
First, a disclaimer. I used to work for Clarify (as a consultant) for a number of years. I haven't worked for them for almost two years, but I still have a close relationship with the company and many people there.
First of all, ClearLogistics is a *family* of products - not just one product. There are products for Order Operations, Field Operations, Spares Management, and Depot Repair. They can work by themselves, or integrate together. Usually people are talking about the Spares Management products when they talk about ClearLogistics.
I would agree that there are some limitations to the SM product. But I've seldom seen a product that handles a task of this size and complexity that doesn't. I won't even get started on the limitations I've seen in SAP or Oracle Financials...
As to the content of the Paul's note. There has *never* been a rewrite of Clear Logistics. The initial CL product was first written in 94. It was a 1.0 release of a product, and thus had a number of gaps in functionality. With Clarify 5.0, many of those were addressed. It wasn't a rewrite, so much as adding more forms and function to the product to address other logistics needs expressed by customers and prospects.
Clarify 6.0 (CFO 98) didn't have much new in the logistics area. Clarify was addressing other areas of their product family.
Clarify 7.0 (EFO), which is coming out shortly, is another release that is adding new function that has been requested by customers. But it's all new - there's no rewrite of existing function. Of course, as in any development effort, when you add new function to an existing piece of code, in some cases you will rewrite small pieces of code to work with the new function, but there is no rewrite of the base product going on with CL - as Paul stated.
The "first" version of this product is almost 5 years old. I worked at Clarify back then, and I know of nobody "rejecting" the product. In fact, the implication above is that Clarify didn't write CL. As one of the people who helped out with the writing of some of the CL function (I was loaned for to R&D for a short while to help out), I can tell you that the implication isn't true.
Since the CL products have come out, they've been extremely well received by existing and new customers. Clarify has a quite a few CL customers (and many of them have large implementations).
Finally, there is a hint that the performance isn't very good for large customers, and that the underlying architecture is "band-aid". I can speak to the architecture/data modeling in extreme depth, and I would love to hear *specific* problems with it (like any technical person, I would have done some things differently, but I don't know of much that is very wrong, per se).
And there are some Clarify customers using CL for quite large volumes - I know this because I work with some of them on an almost daily basis. BTW, I'm talking about receiving/shipping in the 15-25K units per day range (not counting internal transfers, picks, fulfills, and the like).
I hope this shed some more light for those out there wondering about the products.
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Posted: Apr 5 1999 10:44AM EDT as a reply to: Msg 1149 by PJroberson |
