"1C" catches up with SAP in the ability of the ERP system to hold the load. Time to send a German product to landfill?

"1C" In early September 2024, TAdviser was told that they successfully conducted load testing of the solution "1C:ERP Enterprise Management" for 12 thousand users simultaneously working in a single base on PostgreSQL the OS. Linux Having coped with such a load, 1C has come close to fulfilling one of the key requirements of the largest customers still working at. SAP

Test conditions

The base filling and testing scenarios were prepared taking into account the requirements of the largest companies Russia provided (National Competence Center for Holding Management Information Systems ANO NCC ISU). The initiators of the creation of the latter were the holding, RUSSIAN RAILWAYS"" Gazprom neft GK, "" Rosatom their subsidiaries IT companies with centers of competence in the field of "" and 1C other participants in the IT market.

The project load testing team was tasked with:

• Take into account the requirements of the largest customers provided by ANO NCC ISU;
• Take into account the needs for the transition to Linux and PostgreSQL of corporate customers who already use 1C solutions in thousands of workplaces;
• Implement the scenario of simultaneous operation of 12,000 users in one database as close as possible to the real conditions of large enterprises;
• Identify and eliminate possible bottlenecks associated with the parallel work of users;
• Ensure uninterrupted operation and stability of the system, as well as the absence of technological errors.

The version of PostgreSQL 16.3-16.1S was used. The volume of the base was about 1TB. It is filled with data for 2 months of operation of a large enterprise - about 10 million documents.

The structure of the base was as follows:

• an organization that has 54 branches in its structure allocated for individual balances (55 items in the organization reference book)
• 1800 subdivisions
• 3,500 warehouses
• 80,000 items
• 700,000 employees
• 90,000 partners
• 2,500,000 counterparties
• 25,000,000 contracts
• 1,000,000 fixed assets

The selected scenario simulated the real load on the system and reproduced the daily work of the main ERP users:

• Master Production Manager
• Local Manufacturing Manager
• Purchasing Manager
• Sales Manager
• storekeeper;
• domestic consumption of goods;
• production planning;
• budgeting;
• accountant for non-current assets;
• accountant for mutual accounts;
• accountant.

The configuration "1C:ERP Enterprise Management 2" (version 2.5.17.74) was tested. The loading stand was a cluster of servers operating on the 1C: Enterprise platform version 8.3.27.

«1С»

To simulate the work of users, the tool for automating multi-user load tests of information systems "Test-Center," which is part of the product "1C: Corporate Tool Package," was used. The loading stand was a cluster of servers operating on the 1C: Enterprise platform version 8.3.27.

The test run time was 10 hours, during which time 400 thousand key operations were performed. As a result of testing using the APDEX (Application Performance Index, a standard for measuring application performance) method, according to "1C," a performance index of 0.856 was obtained, which corresponds to the "Good" rating and the comfortable work of all users in the information system.

1C believes that the work carried out has confirmed: solutions on the 1C: Enterprise platform can be successfully used in the largest companies to ensure the joint work of a large number of employees. 1C told TAdviser that CIOs of large companies and integrators implementing ERP systems will have an additional argument when making decisions about choosing a system.

"1C:ERP" - a full replacement for SAP?

Large companies have previously often identified high-load capabilities as one of the factors in choosing SAP and continuing to use it, including after the German vendor left Russia amid geopolitical events. In SAP solutions, thousands and even tens of thousands of users can work at the same time, which is relevant for very large enterprises. "1C" for a long time on loads comparable to SAP and did not swing, focusing primarily on small and medium-sized companies as their main customers.

But in recent years, the company has begun to look more and more actively at the pieces of "pie" that SAP traditionally had - where users number in the thousands and tens of thousands. And after February 2022, she strengthened work in this direction against the background of an increased need for import substitution among large customers. According to 1C, at the beginning of 2024, the indicator of 5 thousand simultaneous users on PostgreSQL and Linux was relevant for 1C:ERP.

Russian Railways is one of the key customers who have been heading for a complete rejection of SAP for several years. But all the functionality that is implemented in the RZD RMS (resource management system - ERP) used cannot be replaced simultaneously. This process will take time. Russian Railways plans to completely abandon the solutions of the German vendor until 2028. Now they are already used significantly less than five years ago: the development and implementation of import-independent software is deployed in all directions, and there are significant results in financial management, contractual and procurement activities, document management, etc., told TAdviser General Director of ANO "NCC ISU," Head of the Department of Informatization of Russian Railways Kirill Semion.

As part of the project to create a national ERP platform, we (ANO NCC ISU) have formed targeted technical requirements for large companies. We are now working with their five priority groups. One of them is about performance. Testing the 1C platform at the same time 12 thousand employees is a very significant 1C step towards fulfilling the system load requirements. In the future, the RMS platform (resource management system - ERP) should provide the ability to simultaneously work at least 30 thousand users, there is still a lot of work ahead, "says Kirill Semion.

The other four groups of requirements: platform development tools and operation capabilities, security level, compatibility with other domestic products, including operating systems and processors.

I will separately say about the possibilities of development tools - they, in particular, should allow you to make changes to the system without stopping it - "on the fly." This opportunity is fundamentally important for ensuring business continuity, - added the general director of ANO NCC ISU.

In general, he believes, the results of load testing are very significant for the largest customers: they give them grounds for optimism about the transition to 1C, the cost of this process, the timing and the possibility of designing the entire architecture of the company. In fact, these results are "one of the evidence that domestic decisions can be painlessly applied by big business." For Russian Railways itself, this significant improvement in platform performance is a factor in accelerating and optimizing the import substitution process, added Kirill Semion.

Freepik

Gazprom Neft Chief Information Officer Anton Dumin notes that large customers need to familiarize themselves with the results of load testing in order to understand the relevance of load profiles to their type of activity.

In general, for the market, confirmation of the new capabilities of "1C:ERP" is positive news. It should be borne in mind that improving performance is an essential parameter for a high-quality system, but not the only important factor. When building IT infrastructure in industrial companies, all functional relationships are important to ensure that the ecosystem works efficiently in the complex. Therefore, Gazprom Neft and the 1C developers are in constant cooperation to develop digital products within the framework of a common user ecosystem, says Anton Dumin.

The transition to Russian solutions covers the entire landscape of Gazprom Neft's corporate IT infrastructure: from engineering infrastructure, physical servers and storage systems to general corporate software. In particular, this applies to resource management systems and software for enterprises.

Yuri Silantyev, Head of ERP and Finance at K2Tekh, believes that 12,000 is a very good indicator in terms of the number of simultaneously working users, but each customer has his own equipment, business processes, and his own load profile. In the event that there is a task to implement on the same volume of users, it is necessary to plan the testing and performance work, no matter what platform is chosen as the target.

In my opinion, a more significant indicator that 1C:ERP can act as a full-fledged replacement for SAP in large customers is the proven experience of large-scale implementations. Such large companies as TMH, Lokotech, Russian Railways, Rostec, Russian Post, Gazprom Neft, DIT of Moscow are already successfully operating 1C solutions for thousands and tens of thousands of jobs. The fact of the already implemented working system serves as a much more weighty argument when making a decision than just a load test, - said Yuri Silantyev.

In Severstal, regarding the abandonment of SAP, they noted that at one point it is impossible to completely switch to Russian software for continuous production: "This is a great risk of deterioration in technological processes and the quality of our work." And here the question is not even in the quality of the solutions themselves, but in the habit of users, in integration into already built processes, said a company representative in a conversation with TAdviser. Any new solutions should be implemented thoughtfully and in stages. In addition, a balance is needed between the speed of import substitution and the use of workable and safely operated foreign software.

So far, there is no universal offer on the Russian market in terms of industrial ERP, for example. Perhaps the way out is to conclude strategic partnerships with large companies that, like Severstal, have been developing foreign ERPs at their sites for years and have their own teams and developments in this area. And it is important to gradually implement domestic solutions for certain components, being ready for refinement and complex integration into the existing landscape, Severstal believes.

In 1C itself, it is noted that the transition from one ERP system to another (anyway, which one) in a large organization is in any case a serious project, no less serious than the implementation of the system "from scratch." It requires an appropriate approach, budget, organization of work and, probably, the key - a strong team of specialists. There are many "1C" specialists in the country, but there are still not enough of them, those that are are overloaded with orders. Resources can be justified not only by the political situation, but also by a more complete, more relevant reflection of the current needs of the organization.

Often, organizations change not only ERP, but also related technologies, for example, switch DBMS Oracle from one of the domestic Postgre assemblies, and this is also the cost of retraining or hiring specialists, added to 1C, answering a TAdviser question that in addition to performance, load restrictions restrain large customers in Russia from switching from ERP SAP to 1C.