SSA Global aligns around "Coke & Pepsi" worlds
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 11/1/2003 12:00:00 AM
Coinciding with the launch of its new name in late September, enterprise software vendor SSA Global (formerly SSA Global Technologies) laid down its product road map. The acquisitive vendor is promising to bring forward its existing ERP products, while merging them over the next few years under two main product lines.
According to Cory A. Eaves, VP of solutions management and research, one common system—to be called SSA UNIX—will be based on "open systems" technologies, including support for Microsoft .NET. The other common system—to be named SSA iSeries—will be oriented toward IBM's iSeries platform and related technologies such as Java. "It's a Coke and Pepsi world today in the enterprise software market, with these two approaches being dominant," says Eaves. "For a midmarket vendor and above, support for these two worlds is a given."
The direction is a natural for SSA Global, says Eaves, because some of its ERP suites primarily run on iSeries, while others have a long history of running on UNIX and Windows platforms. For instance, the Baan and MK Enterprise ERP products will evolve into SSA UNIX, while BPCS and PRMS will evolve into SSA iSeries. While there is no plan for an "SSA Windows" suite, both suites will support various Microsoft technologies.
Eaves says that "within the next two years," pieces of the common ERP suites will be ready, but adds that "it will take us several years" to get the merged product lines fully completed. Also, by mid-2004, the company will release a common financials application called SSA Financials capable of working with existing and future ERP products.
The product consolidation will be delivered incrementally through normal version upgrades, says Eaves. It will not be "forced march," he says, since prior versions will be supported. "Our commitment is to never a sunset a product as long as it's technically feasible to support it," he says.
Eaves says that SSA Global will move forward with Baan's "Gemini" ERP release. After acquiring Baan earlier this year, SSA Global delayed the planned fall release of Gemini. The delay, he says, was aimed at ensuring that details such as migration tools and localizations were in line with company practices. No firm availability date has been set yet, says Eaves.
