From databases to Web services, enterprise vendors seek new market advantage

Comparing new releases of enterprise solutions coming out this fall, it would seem three prominent ERP vendors are pursuing three rather different development strategies.

Two years in development, SYSPRO's Release 10 of its SYSPRO 6.0 flagship product is described by the company as “its most important release in five years.” Driven by feedback from SYSPRO's global user base, the intention is to allow greater flexibility of use and customization, without the need for source-code changes. It will have “an immense influence on the future direction and development of the product,” according to Rene Inzana, SYSPRO USA product manager.

Specifically, Release 10 boosts the product's ease of use and reporting capabilities with embedded Crystal Reports, a tool to facilitate report scheduling & management, electronic signatures, and major changes to the user interface.

“The screens users see are a lot more customizable at the company, group, or individual user level,” says Inzana. “That is, you can move fields around, remove them from the screen, or add fields. You also can attach VBScript to a field to make it more intelligent.” The guiding principle, Inzana adds, is ease of use—with every change made in direct response to user feedback.

User feedback also influenced Infor's release of SyteLine 7.05, says James Willey, director of product management. Here too, the result is more customizable user interfaces. Departments and individuals can work with screens that reflect their own needs, while different applications can be combined in a single screen.

But the major thrust, claims Willey, is to leverage SyteLine's Microsoft .NET heritage.

“We're a Microsoft-centric solution—period,” he says. In practice, that means cut-and-paste is elevated to an art form. With SyteLine 7.05, for example, it's possible to cut and paste directly into and out of Microsoft Excel or Outlook—e.g., pasting a price list into an email, and then copying a revised version back into SyteLine. “Previously this would have required writing code to dump the data field by field, and then writing more code to write the data back,” says Willey.

At Epicor Software, in contrast, the story revolves around an entirely revamped version based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA)—Epicor Vantage 8—in 2004. Released in September, Epicor Vantage 8.03 leverages the advantages of SOA in two ways, says Rod Winger, director of product marketing.

First, it contains significant new supply chain functionality. “Vantage traditionally has been strong in manufacturing, but less so in distribution, supply chain, and warehouse management,” says Winger. Second, new industry-specific functionality meets the needs of users in two industries: automotive, and aerospace & defense.

“While most of our competitors continue to re-architect their offerings, we are able to spend our time more effectively,” says Winger. Vantage 8.03, he says, is the first of three or four waves of releases, each of which will address industry-specific functionality.

Seal & Design, an O-ring and gasket manufacturer based in Clarence, N.Y., implemented Vantage in 2005.

“In a highly competitive industry such as automotive, customers are demanding faster production times, more flexibility, and premium quality,” says Adam Mikols, controller at Seal & Design. “We rely on Epicor Vantage to enable us to meet the challenge and better adapt to the needs of our customers.”