tjbyfield
17th December 2004, 07:56
In looking over some past news clippings of SSA and Baan I uncovered a previous association between Baan and General Atlantic Partners who bank-rolled the SSA-GT purchase of Baan, that I hadnt seen before
In 1993 when Baan was booming it was stuck for cash and sold a one-third interest to General Atlantic Partners venture capital entrepreneurs. A couple of years later Tom Tinsley previously a Director of McKinsey & Co joined Baan as the company was listed on the Nasdaq and Amsterdam exchanges.
Over the next few years the company continued to grow and its share price hit $54 in early 1998 which put its value at well over ten billion dollars. Later that year the shares dropped 15% and Tom Tinsley was appointed CEO. The shares continued to drop over the next year and by the end 1999 Tom Tinsley resigned to take up a job at General Atlantic Partners where he is still a Partner.
SSA-GT itself was formed in 2000 from the bankrupt SSA with its by then ancient BPCS software but with the financial resources of Cerberus Capital Management and most importantly, by 2001, with Mike Greenough as President, Chairman and CEO. Having bought from Computer Associates: the Manman/x and MK products which were originally based on Baans early Triton offering, SSA-GT in 2003 with a fresh injection of General Atlantic cash managed to pick up Baan together with its yet unreleased new software version for $135 million (or one 74 th of its value 5 years earlier perhaps just one percent of its real worth in 2003.)
Whilst it would appear to be no accident that Tom Tinsley was involved with what must be rated as the software bargain of the century, I think it is ironic that indirectly, it was software like Baan (Manman/x, Triton) that caused the demise of the original S3x/AS400 centric SSA company. As it was dying it even tried to develop a unix based BPCS but this simply did not work and had to be replaced at customer sites with the old AS400 version and this probably involved financial compensation for the added cost of hardware and re-implementation costs.
Another irony is that Baans financial troubles were probably exacerbated when the Baan brothers got too greedy and sought to rescind marketing arrangements with ASK (and others) when they were devoured by Computer Associates in 1994. Now all of the Baan products are back at the one company and earning massive support revenue.
I also see a great pity with the saving of Baan. Despite the excellence of Baan software, the financiers of SSA-Global expect to earn an excellent (or better) return for their investment of $135 million rather than earn a return on the potential worth of the software as if it were in the hands of someone who had paid say ten billion dollars for it.
It is clear that as ERP software the new version must rank with or above the now very old SAP and whatever is distilled from Oracle/Peoplesoft/JDE. However, it is not being marketed by a company in that league nor by one with the competence to market in that league. In fact there are suggestions that it is not being actively marketed at all.
Terry
In 1993 when Baan was booming it was stuck for cash and sold a one-third interest to General Atlantic Partners venture capital entrepreneurs. A couple of years later Tom Tinsley previously a Director of McKinsey & Co joined Baan as the company was listed on the Nasdaq and Amsterdam exchanges.
Over the next few years the company continued to grow and its share price hit $54 in early 1998 which put its value at well over ten billion dollars. Later that year the shares dropped 15% and Tom Tinsley was appointed CEO. The shares continued to drop over the next year and by the end 1999 Tom Tinsley resigned to take up a job at General Atlantic Partners where he is still a Partner.
SSA-GT itself was formed in 2000 from the bankrupt SSA with its by then ancient BPCS software but with the financial resources of Cerberus Capital Management and most importantly, by 2001, with Mike Greenough as President, Chairman and CEO. Having bought from Computer Associates: the Manman/x and MK products which were originally based on Baans early Triton offering, SSA-GT in 2003 with a fresh injection of General Atlantic cash managed to pick up Baan together with its yet unreleased new software version for $135 million (or one 74 th of its value 5 years earlier perhaps just one percent of its real worth in 2003.)
Whilst it would appear to be no accident that Tom Tinsley was involved with what must be rated as the software bargain of the century, I think it is ironic that indirectly, it was software like Baan (Manman/x, Triton) that caused the demise of the original S3x/AS400 centric SSA company. As it was dying it even tried to develop a unix based BPCS but this simply did not work and had to be replaced at customer sites with the old AS400 version and this probably involved financial compensation for the added cost of hardware and re-implementation costs.
Another irony is that Baans financial troubles were probably exacerbated when the Baan brothers got too greedy and sought to rescind marketing arrangements with ASK (and others) when they were devoured by Computer Associates in 1994. Now all of the Baan products are back at the one company and earning massive support revenue.
I also see a great pity with the saving of Baan. Despite the excellence of Baan software, the financiers of SSA-Global expect to earn an excellent (or better) return for their investment of $135 million rather than earn a return on the potential worth of the software as if it were in the hands of someone who had paid say ten billion dollars for it.
It is clear that as ERP software the new version must rank with or above the now very old SAP and whatever is distilled from Oracle/Peoplesoft/JDE. However, it is not being marketed by a company in that league nor by one with the competence to market in that league. In fact there are suggestions that it is not being actively marketed at all.
Terry