... are they only making quick Money and then they will close or sell the whole shop.

The Company behind SSA ("Atlantic Partner ... "?) is well know as a company for this strategy and I heard from different customers and (past) partners, that SSA is only looking for quick money, but they don't have any concern to hold their customers if they don't want to pay in a short time.

Any opinions?

This analysis about the strategy of SSA is interesting:

http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,104110,00.html

It is getting harder to see just what their strategy is. To me it is clear that the strategy is NOT to compete for software sales in the ERP market. There have been very few new-customer sales of ERP systems (Baan or BPCS/ PRMS) in the past year and very few upgrades to LN over the same period.

During this period SAP claim to have sold in the order of 700 new sites.

My hunch is that SSA are focused on milking the very lucrative support fees while ever they exist. The profit margin from this division must get better and better as time goes on because the need for support becomes minimal after a few years of use of the systems.

Like any software supplier, also Baan is making good money by support fees.
But 700 new customers as said by SAP is perhaps a bit optimistic: how do you define a new customer when, in this time of consolidation and hugh acquisitions, merged or bought companies are forced by their new owners to migrate to SAP or Orcacle.

In my humble opinion SSA made a strategic choice to wait with launching LN till it was as good as should be, instead of puhing it into the market to make quick wins and that sounds like the opposite of milking customers........


But after all: time will tell

For me actions speak louder than words and the actions itself decides the future.

Deteriorating service levels,increasing emphasis on payment first and then service ,excessive stress on cash balance in balance sheet, acquisition spree without any integration details( sales staff not yet knowing hardware , software technical details) are certain things to worry about for all stakeholders.

Looks like creating waves and news is kinda 'making hay while sun shines'
strategy in the booming nasdaq . Entire baan history is a testimony to this fact.

With this background , SSA does not seem to have long term wealth generatiing stratgey for all it's stake holders (customers , employees , partners and investors).

Like any software supplier, also Baan is making good money by support fees.
Baan support/professional services provide very lucrative income for SSA but the point that Hutje33 seems to miss in his/her defense of SSA is that there is virtually no other income from the product. As far as new-sales go the product looks like it is a lemon. What ever the real reason for delaying the release, LN has now been available for well over a year and yet there are very few implementations - we certainly don't hear many/any good news stories from either migrations or new installs.

...But 700 new customers as said by SAP is perhaps a bit optimistic...
Whether intentional or not I think Hutje33 approach to SAP install numbers is distored by the the fact that SAP is in a different league to the now-stagnent Baan product. The simplest and most reliable measure of relative market size can be estimated by dividing SAP's market capitalisation by Baan sale price ($132mil) - almost an order of magnitude difference. I think we need also to remember that whilst the install base is not increasing with new installs the support base is reducing for a number of reasons.

(Personally I love the baan product with which I have now worked for over 10 years but I am very dissappointed that SSA's strategy is not to grow the product.)