Re: "interBiz" acquisition by SSAGT

THANKS for this HUGE news, I am not sure this is the right forum to discuss
the implications, but I do not know what forum that should be.

> http://www.interbiz.com/Press/Releases.asp?361

My initial thoughts on this include:

CA & SSAX have been strong competitors in which I always had thought that CA
was the larger conglomerate.  I never had a good feel for the relative size
of GT.

Does this mean that SSAGT now owns CA-PRMS?
Will SSAGT continue or improve support for CA-PRMS?
Did the US Justice Department approve this consolidation in the ERP industry?

Possible starting points where to go to review the relative sizes of the
market shares of the different ERP mentioned by this news release, as opposed
to the rest of the ERP market in midsized manufacturing.
http://www.MidrangeEnterprise.com
http://www.apics.org
http://www.Enterprise.CNET.COM

I had thought MANMAN was ERP for Unix including HP e3000 which HP is in
process of dumping. HP 3000 customers love that system as much as AS/400 is
loved, and now have an Open OS effort http://www.openMPE.org  to salvage what
HP is throwing away.  Is there room for traditional commercial software
vendors to participate & compete in the Open Source universe?

SSAX enters into a lot of partnerships with outfits that will value added
hand shake with BPCS but this is the first time since long before the
bankrupsy that I have been aware of such an aquisition.  Some of the past
partnerships have been e-commerce & collaboration supply chain linked to
BPCS, which I think have great potential for future profits that perhaps SSAX
wants to get more centrally involved in grabbing.

I am not up on the latest BPCS versions but overall it seems to me that SSAX
is extremely powerful in the area of core manufacturing, and a bit weak in
several industry nitches such as those that need serious re-engineering, and
weak in several application areas that connect to core manufacturing, such as
payroll, HR, financials.  This aquisition is aimed squarely at repairing
weaknesses that SSAX is aware of.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)