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SSA Global Unveils Next Generation ERP for iSeries Users Sign Up to receive Daily News Alerts in your E-mail Inbox
Posted on Friday, May 06, 2005 11:18:00 AM |
In a bid to shore up its important, legacy iSeries base by providing customers with a viable upgrade path, SSA Global Technologies Inc. officially released ERP LX, a new product that will target users of its BPCS, PRMS, KBM, Prism and Infinium MM/PR ERP products.
The initial release of ERP LX specifically targets the BPCS customer base, SSA Global's largest set of customers running its ERP applications on IBM's iSeries platform. Versions of ERP LX -- complete with migration tools, documentation and education materials -- will be available for users of the PRMS and KBM products in the first quarter of 2006, according to Kari Miller, director of solutions management at SSA Global (Chicago.) ERP LX release dates for users of SSA's Prism and Infinium MM/PR products have not yet been determined, Miller said.
Like other enterprise software vendors that are attempting to grow through acquisition, SSA Global is attempting to walk a fine line when it comes to managing its installed base of customers. SSA, like competitors such as Oracle and Microsoft, want to attract customers currently using a variety of ERP products, to a single, converged platform. That would save these vendors both development dollars and management overhead. Microsoft's Project Green and Oracle's Fusion program are both intended to do this, as is SSA's ERP LX and another converged platform, ERP LN, introduced last summer targeting its customers using Unix and NT-based products such as Baan, ManMan and MK.
At the same time, however, these vendors must reassure current customers that they won't be forced to migrate, and that current releases will continue to be supported. SSA has gone the furthest among competitors in this regard, promising to continue supporting existing releases "as long as technically feasible," according to Miller. Oracle has promised to continue providing support for acquired products such as Peoplesoft's EnterpriseOne for 10 years. Miller said SSA has no plans to increase maintenance prices on its existing iSeries-based ERP products despite release of ERP LX.
SSA's convergence strategy, while still young, has so far been relatively successful, said Judy Sweeney, a research director at AMR Research (Boston.) "On the ERP LN product, they have even begun to attract some new sales, which is a key goal beyond getting current customers to migrate," said Sweeney.
Ultimately, said Sweeney, SSA's success in getting iSeries customers to move to ERP LX will depend on the power and quality of the migration tools the company offers. "If it looks to customers -- particularly those with highly customized deployments -- like a full reimplementation, that will open the door to them possibly moving to a non-SSA product or simply staying where they are," she said. Customers that choose to remain on their current releases will likely face higher maintenance costs, Sweeney predicted, as the size of the customer base over which SSA can amortize support expenses shrinks.
ERP LX is designed as what Miller called a "best of feature" product, borrowing the best modules and functionality from SSA's current iSeries products. Much of the code base for ERP LX, however, came from BPCS, which Miller described as SSA's most robust iSeries-based product. ERP LX, for example, incorporates much of the manufacturing functionality from BPCS current release -- Version 8.2. ERP LX also includes BPCS quality management functionality, although it has been enhanced with code from PRMS which, unlike BPCS, allows quality management of non-lot controlled items.
ERP LX includes other significant upgrades. ERP LX, for example, includes a new browser-based graphical user interface and templates that will make it easier for customers to implement workflows specific to vertical industries such as consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, life sciences, specialty chemicals and automotive.
ERP LX was also re-implemented in what Miller called a more modern software language, RPG. BPCS had been built using a fourth-generation language that is no longer supported.
And ERP LX is built around IBM's Websphere application server technology which, Miller said, will make it easier for customers to integrate the application with legacy enterprise systems and with other SSA products such as its Supply Chain Management and Corporate Performance Management suites.
SSA expects ERP LX to be particularly attractive to BPCS customers that had not migrated to the latest releases of that product. Miller said many customers are still running the 4.50 CD and 6.02 versions of BPCS. Those customers -- like all current BPCS customers that are currently paying maintenance fees to SSA -- will be able to migrate to ERP LX for no additional charge.
SSA expects between four and five percent of its BPCS customer base to migrate to ERP LX by the end of calendar 2005. The company expects 10 percent of the BPCS base to migrate in the first full year of ERP LX availability. So far, Miller said, four customers have participated in an ERP LX early adopter program, and two of those are expected to go live with the product by the end of May.
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