Re: SSA Global Acquires Marcam

["Jim Black" <jrblack@xxxxxxxxxx>]

In 1997, in a financial transaction that confused even some experts, the
MAPICS business unit and CEO Dick Cook actually spun off MARCAM (yes.. it's
true.. the child actually sold the parent). MARCAM had acquired the MAPICS
product/business unit from IBM four years earlier in March of 1993.

The ERP solution which MAPICS retained is OS400 based and targeted to
discrete manufacturers. It is known as "ERP for iSeries" but it is commonly
referred to as MAPICS or even just XA. (In 2001, MAPICS acquired PivotPoint
and their open solution known as PointMan and, in 2003, they acquired
FrontStep and their Microsoft.Net solution known as SyteLine).

MARCAM continued with PRISM - their self-developed ERP solution for the
process-industry. It is an OS400-based product. In the late 90's, MARCAM
developed PROTEAN as their process-industry specific ERP solution on the
Microsoft platform (the so-called 'open' system solution). Just two years
later, MARCAM was struggling and was acquired by Invensys in 1999.

In that same year, Invensys acquired an EAM solution from AVANTIS - a
company established in 1984. The AVANTIS solution is offered in two
flavours - Avantis.XA for the OS400 platform and Avantis.PRO R4.0 for the
Microsoft.net platform.

It is not clear to me if AVANTIS (or anything other than PRISM and PROTEAN)
was acquired by SSA in the transaction announced on July 1, 2004.

NOTE: I recognize that none of this is related to the BPCS product itself
but merely to the owner of BPCS. This history is offered only to clarify
certain information from previous posts and is not intended to begin another
thread.

Cheers!
Jim


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Jderham2@xxxxxx>
To: <bpcs-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 5:48 PM
Subject: Re: SSA Global Acquires Marcam


> MARCAM sold off MAPICS some time ago. There prime products now are
Avantis.XA
> & Avantis.Pro. The former is a "green screen"  Asset Management
Application
> while the latter is the Client Server version of the same application.
>
> Jack Derham
> Direct Systems, Inc.
> Marietta, GA
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