Re: Current Rumours -- BPCS-L

Hi guys,

I was at the N.E. BPCS user group meeting last week in Hyannis, MA at the Cape
and heard Bill Stuek whom you know is the new CEO & President of SSA. He made
the following key points:

1) A major downsizing of roughly 25% will occur on July 7th or 8th and will
mainly effect the R&D and sales departments.

2) Development will continue - but the company will first refocus on making the
existing versions functional. (What a concept!)

3) There will be a module reduction and a the company will focus on 8 or 10 key
markets rather than build a module to suit every industry. They want to satisfy
the other areas by using SMG (Symantec Messaging Gateway) and connecting to 3rd
party partners. He also assured us that SSA will handle it's partners more
fairly in the future too.

4) SMG will become increasingly important in new development.

5) NT *is* going to be developed and will become increasingly more important to
SSA. However 90% of their business is on the '400, 7% is UNIX and the rest is
something else!? Mr. Stuek assured us that SSA will remain committed to the
AS/400.

6) Roger Covey is gone for good. He is selling his stock as fast is allowed by
code. One of the conference participants made a reference to Covey being like
"Jason" from Friday the 13th...he just keeps coming back. Anyway, it was
hillarious - you had to be there.

7) In the new organization, client solutions will be merged with Sales.

8) We will be noticing improved service from the HELP LINE. Stuek acknowledged
Covey's mistake of making cuts out of the help line.

9) There is no intention to abandon the 4.05CD product in the future. Being
realistic, this will happen someday and Stuek assured us that we will be
forewarned in plenty of time before SSA stops supporting this version.

10) SSA is not for sale and steps are being taken internally to guard against
hostile takeover.

That's about it! I think I remembered everything.  In all, Mr. Stuek gave an
excellent talk and I left very confident that he has a good plan in place and
can accomplish what he says he will, BPCS users will be a lot happier in the
years to come.

These regional conferences are great! I really enourage everyone to attend next
year if you possibly can.

Paul LaFlamme



Chuck Lewis wrote:

> Hi Michael !
>
> 1) I hope any staff reductions are fair (i.e. get rid of the dead weight and
> the "road blocks") and not just reducing to be reducing...
>
> 2) Are they in SERIOUS trouble ?
>
> 3) Then what ?
>
> 4) What's "BEC" ?
>
> Chuck
>
> Michael Ozanne wrote:
>
> > The following rumours are now circulating concerning imminent
> > announcements from SSA.
> >
> > 1)Across the board staff reductions by 20 to 40 percent.
> > 2)Abandonment of the UNIX and NT versions.
> > 3)Freezing of the design and functionality at 6.0.04
> > 4)Possible closure of the BEC.
> >
> > --
> > Michael Ozanne
> > +---
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| To subscribe to this list send email to BPCS-L-SUB@midrange.com.
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