Hybrid Forge

Interprise Suite is a relative newcomer in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software marketplace. While the product has been around since 2006, not until recently has it been worthy of implementation within your business. Trust us, we started working with Interprise Suite in the fall of 2007 as the ERP platform for the start-up social enterprise ireturn inc. Like many things in life, first impressions are a very important indicator of future outcomes. In anticipation of the release of Interprise Suite 2009 we thought it was time to publish a handy pre-installation guide to ensure your first out-of-the-box experience is a success.

Drawing on my past experience as an Air Force officer I’ve have put together the Interprise Suite Pre-flight Checklist. As you may or may not be aware each and every time an aircraft leaves the ground there is a rigorous list of items to be checked before the pilot even starts the engines. Ultimately the pilot is responsible for determining the aircraft’s airworthiness before he embarks. As Interprise expands its marketing to offer single-user versions of Interprise Suite installable by virtually anyone, some of its requirements are bound to be overlooked prior to launching the installer. I admit that many of the checks I describe are simple RTFM to the propeller-head crowd, yet we anticipate many a motivated small-business owner who may not be schooled in the black art of aspnet_regiis.exe will want to evaluate the software for themselves.

This checklist makes the basic assumption that you are planning to install both the client and the server for Interprise Suite. To ensure your first flight is a success I present the Hybrid Forge Interprise Suite Pre-Flight Checklist.

Interprise Suite Install Pre-flight Checklist

Operating system

Interprise Suite is supported on the following operating systems: Windows XP Professional, Vista Business, Windows Server 2003 Standard or better, and Windows Server 2008 Standard or better.  Home edition of Windows XP and the lighter versions of Vista do not have the Microsoft web server IIS so avoid those.  Interprise will run on 64-bit versions of Windows but a specific 64-bit  version is not currently available. I’m currently using the release candidate of Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate available through our MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) subscription and its a significant improvement over Vista and even Windows XP for those hold outs.  In a future post I’ll describe our Interprise Suite experiences on Windows 7.

Disk Space

While the official requirement is 10GB for both the client and server, to avoid disk space issues from Microsoft service packs and other maintenance downloads as well as disk space for additional company or demo databases, ensure your machine has at least 20GB of free space.

Internet Information Server (IIS)

Prior to launching the Interprise Suite installer ensure you have Internet Information Server (IIS) installed.  Installing IIS before running the installer will save you from wasting time restarting the installer when it fails to detects IIS.  Be sure to test that IIS is running by starting your favorite web browser and pointing it to http://localhost.  Check whether your firewall is blocking traffic on the standard HTTP port number 80. Be sure to open access to this port to your machine.

Instructions on installing IIS for Vista

.Net Framework 2.0

Ensure that Microsoft’s .Net Framework version 2.0 is installed.  Note that this requirement is only relevant for early versions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 as newer Microsoft operating systems include the framework.

Download the .Net 2.0 Redistributable Package directly from Microsoft

Windows Installer 3.1

The Windows installer is an applications installation and configuration service that facilitates installation packages like Interprise.

Download the Windows Installer 3.1 package

Web Service Enhancements 3.0

In order for the Interprise Suite client to connect to your designated server over the internet you must install the Microsoft Web Service Extensions version 3. The Interprise “smart client” technology relies on web services to communicate with your server.   There are multiple versions available for download from Microsoft and only one is detected by the Interprise installer.  Here is the link to the version Interprise prefers:

Download the Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0 for Microsoft .NET

Microsoft SQL Express 2005

The Interprise Installer will attempt to install Microsoft SQL Express 2005 if it can’t detect a previously installed version of Microsoft SQL Server. Microsoft recently reorganized the SQL Server website to promote the release of SQL Server 2008 and changed the location of the SQL Express 2005 download in the process.  The download is now available at the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 product page.

After checking each of the items on the checklist you are finally cleared to proceed with installation. I hope you enjoy the flight! As Interprise Suite and the software that supports it evolves I will continue to update the checklist. In the short-term I look forward to support for Windows SQL 2008 and Windows 7 and of course the official release of Interprise Suite 2009.

We Speak ‘Interprise Suite’

Interprise Suite is a sophisticated platform for powering your business. At Hybrid Forge we speak Interprise Suite and can help you quickly climb the learning curve on the path to understanding why Interprise Suite is such a compelling choice for your next ERP platform.

My next post on Interprise Suite will discuss deploying to virtual servers and strategies for effectively managing an Interprise server in the cloud. At Hybrid Forge we use VMWare’s ESX Server for virtualizing and managing our servers.  In our data-center environment ESX Server is extremely stable and the performance lost to the hypervisor is ‘virtually’ negligible. We have assisted clients deploying Interprise Suite within shared virtual server environments such as Parallels Virtuozzo and Amazon’s EC2 Cloud Computing Environment.

Contact Hybrid Forge today to discuss what Interprise Suite can do for your business at 877-66-FORGE (3-6743) toll-free.

Tags: eCommerce Software, interprise suite