What will it take?

What will it take for enterprise vendors to be successful, post-Y2K, post-Internet-bubble-bursting? One good answer may have been on display at Chicago-based SSA Global Technologies' (SSA GT) 2002 Global Client Forum held October 13-16 at Bally's in Las Vegas.

Mike Greenough, SSA GT chairman, president, and CEO, says, "We are profitable at existing business levels. With consolidation in business applications markets, surviving vendors will need to attain a certain critical mass. We will have multiple brands, and we will support them."

Many readers will remember SSA GT's progenitor, Systems Software Associates (SSA), which, on the strength of its BPCS product, was for quite some time one of the top five enterprise vendors in the world. SSA's fall from grace and eventual reorganization are most often attributed to an ill-advised foray into object technology.

SSA GT in fiscal 2001 attained $187 million in annual revenues, and profits (EBITA) of $35 million. It recently acquired interBiz, the applications business of Computer Associates International, as well as MAX International. interBiz itself was home to at least several brands of legacy business applications.

That leaves SSA GT with a near-dizzying array of enterprise, warehouse management, and finance applications—even as Greenough boasts that the company is on the verge of another major acquisition. Systems supported today include PRMS, Warehouse BOSS, Masterpiece, KBM, MK, MK Logistics, Manman, Maxcim, CAS, BPCS, and SSA GT MAX+.

Bruce Bond, a group vice president with analyst firm Gartner, says SSA GT management clearly understands how its business is changing. For the foreseeable future, many say, IT markets in developed countries are not likely to grow any faster than their economies as a whole do. According to AMR Research, fully 28 percent of the near $20-billion ERP market is tied to maintenance, topped only by implementations and consulting, and license revenue.

With fierce competition driving down prices, vendors can no longer rely on license sales to deliver stellar returns. Says Greenough, "It's no longer about knocking on doors to sell a $2-million CRM solution. Rather, it's about selling low-cost solutions to existing enterprise customers."

Bond does question though whether SSA GT will be able to support the entire list of branded systems indefinitely. Greenough answers, "If one of our customers is married to a technology or version, we'll support that. Of course, we don't control hardware offerings or operating systems. We will use price to influence our customers, and migration paths can be used over the coming years to consolidate the total number of systems we support, while ensuring needed functionality is not lost."