Re: SSA Global acquired by Infor

   In addition to this BPCS-L thread, which started at
   http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200605/msg00878.html a parallel
   thread is now in MIDRANGE-L which you can follow from its starting point
   http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l/200605/msg00878.html

   My main concerns
   * For a variety of reasons the Anti-Trust Division of US Justice Dept
   seems to have abandoned the notion that consolidation of an industry means
   that in the long run there is less competition, more monopoly, less
   innovation, and that it is their job to do something about that.
   * When two or more ERP competing in market place, and one buys out the
   other, there is a risk that one of the two ERP will be trashed because the
   buyer thinks can get more income by moving its customers to the other ERP
   than milking the software contracts.  We have seen this in other types of
   hardware and software.
   * When a company is supporting a wide range of similar products, it can
   decide to abandon the least profitable one.  We saw this when HP got out
   of the midrange market, abandoning tens of thousands of Universities.
   * There is a lot of money to be made from companies that have bought into
   ERP with the notion that over time the ERP will be improved, but to make
   that income, it does not need to be improved.  Needed improvements: better
   integrate with applications that came along after ERP was invented by
   APICS in the 1950's, especially Supply Chain and state-of-art engineering
   design; help with corporate governance, such as security and change
   management (both hardware and software), and I can mention others.
   Consider impact of off-shoring on what an enterprise needs, improved
   employee conferencing in a telecommuting world, especially as pandemic
   threats increase.
   * When 2 companies of approx equal size attempt to merge operations
   (remember HP and Compaq?) the process can be extremely disruptive,
   especially if corporate culture dissimilar.  In any merger, a lot of
   corporate memory may be in the heads of employees now lost, and not in
   systems the new owners know how to navigate.
   * Will all the different ERP that are now under one vendor roof be
   supported by the new owners in the style to which the ERP users have come
   to expect?

   The news media
   * Infor was a rival of SSA (no surprise to me there)
   * This buyout makes Infor # 3 behind SAP and Oracle.
   * The deal is worth $ 1.36 billion.
   * The combined result is officially 37,000 customers.
   * SSA HQ Chicago is public company with approx 3,500 employees
   * Infor HQ Atlanta is privately held with approx 3,1000 employees

   Quote

     Judy Sweeney, senior vice president of research at Boston-based AMR
     Research, said Infor is likely to cut top management, marketing and some
     sales jobs in Chicago

   AMR is only one of many research outfits in this area ... I expect some
   business reporters may soon be interviewing more people at
   Aberdeen Group http://www.aberdeen.com/default.asp
   AMR http://www.amrresearch.com/Default.asp?bhcp=1
   http://www.atkearney.com/
   Deloitte
   http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/home/0%2C1044%2Csid%25253D1000%2C00.html
   Forrester http://www.forrester.com/my/1,,1-2,FF.html
   Gartner http://www.gartner.com/Init
   IDC http://www.idc.com/
   http://www.sageza.com/
   Financial Industry http://www.towergroup.com/research/index.jsp
   Yankee Group http://www.yankeegroup.com/
   etc. to get their take on all this, since these outfits have all done
   extensive research on implications of consolidation of the ERP marketplace

   http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/cst-fin-ssa16.html

   
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0605160187may16,1,390617.story?coll=chi-business-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

   http://www.technewsworld.com/story/50541.html

   Check news in the search engines. 
   SSA is not the only recent or current aquisition by Infor.

   -
   Al Macintyre
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AlMac
   http://www.ryze.com/go/Al9Mac
   BPCS/400 Computer Janitor ... see
   http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/stories/2002/11/08/bpcsDocSources.html