http://investor.ssaglobal.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=180511&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=856462&highlight=

In fact is infor (www.infor.com).
How many times has Baan changed hands these last years?!

Victor,

Thanks a lot and I have already changed the title.

Well, at least the owners of SSA Global, Ceberus, are doing it again and in fact this news should not come as a surprise.
Now the question becomes what will happen to the SSA BAAN software?
Also, who is next in line to take over Infor?

What a jungle!

Regards,

Edwin

Infor looks to me as a company that aquires marketshare and is not consolidating that much. Looking to the other companies that are bought I assume that most (if not all) SSA products will stay.

As Baan is the biggest of their product lines I would be supprised if they dropped that.

How many times has Baan changed hands these last years?!
3 Times:
- first it was Invensys
- then it was SSA
- and now it is Infor

*** Deleted response on request ***

Too bad to change the owner again although we all know this will happen sooner or later. So what will be the new name for Baan, Infor Baan or Infor SSA LN?

Actually this is a very interesting development because if you check their website (http://www.infor.com) you cannot find any news about partners. Obviously Infor is used to do everything themselves.
Does this also mean the end of the exclusivity of Profuse (the premier Dutch SSA Global BAAN partner) in the Dutch market?

Hopefully we will experience some very interesting changes in the BAAN market during the course of this year!

Regards,

Edwin

Infor do have partners just not many of them, I work for one hosting their Syteline7 product.

...Now the question becomes what will happen to the SSA BAAN software? ...

There will probalby be some nervous people in SSA also. In view of the very poor job that they have done expanding the installed Baan licence-seats and customer names/sites, their trepidation is not be unwarranted (in my view).

The answer to your question probably depends on whether Infor just want the lucrative annual support income or whether they want long term customers.

If they are in it for the long haul I think we should look forward to further development of the package and upgrading at no cost from Infor and little overall-cost.

Terry

Perhaps one paragraph of their company history could be interesting:


Though the company was founded in 2002 as Agilisys in Malvern, Pennsylvania--when SCT's Process Manufacturing & Distribution Solutions Division became a privately owned, independent organization--Infor's experience in the manufacturing and distribution industries reaches back three decades. In February 2004, with headquarters relocated to Atlanta, Agilisys acquired Infor Business Solutions AG, a long-established German company providing ERP solutions to mid-sized firms.


Notice the fact the fact that Infor was historically a German company. This could indicate a break with previous management style and customer approach.

Infor: Geac deal suggests ERP market consolidation10th November 2005
By
Golden Gate Capital has agreed to acquire financial-software maker Geac Computer Corp for $1bn
The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) market continues to consolidate, with the announcement on 8 November that the venture capital parent of Infor Global, Golden Gate Capital, has agreed in principle to buy Geac. The deal, which will see Infor move into the middle tier of the ERP market, could now precipitate further merger and acquisition activity across the sector.
Golden Gate Capital has already taken at least five companies private in the last two years, and overall has probably brought some 14 vendors together. It is an aggressive consolidator, but to date has tried to keep a solid vertical focus. All of its ERP products are being grouped under the Infor Global branding, which includes applications such as Lilly Software, MAPICS, and Agilisys.

As an example of Infor's existing vertical strengths, it claims that some 73% of tier 1 and 2 automotive suppliers already use Infor solutions. Additional areas that it focuses on are distribution and the make-to-order manufacturing business, as well as process manufacturing such as brewing.

The terms of the deal are US$11.10 per share, valuing Geac at US$1 billion, and this is certainly a premium on the share price, both today and over the last year. The pressure has been on the medium-sized ERP vendors for some time now, with maintenance revenues ? essential for ongoing product development ? being squeezed. Size matters in the ERP market, which is changing in that prospective customers are starting to look at financial viability of vendors as being at least as important as the fit of the product to their requirements.

While SAP and Oracle currently fight at the very top end of the market, in the middle we now have SSA (another consolidator, with Baan probably one of the better known players to have been brought into its stable), Lawson (still in the throes of acquiring Sweden's Intentia), Microsoft Business Solutions, and now Infor plus Geac. Lower down the ERP market there are still a large number of niche players, many of whom are still perfectly viable in terms of continuing customer support and product development.

Spending on ERP is starting to rise again, as organizations review the applications that were deployed to meet the Y2K deadline, and the market is on the rise. Further M&A activity can be expected over the coming year as the participants work out the optimal combination of brain and brawn to succeed.

Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)

Infor: Geac deal suggests ERP market consolidation10th November 2005
By
Golden Gate Capital has agreed to acquire financial-software maker Geac Computer Corp for $1bn
The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) market continues to consolidate, with the announcement on 8 November that the venture capital parent of Infor Global, Golden Gate Capital, has agreed in principle to buy Geac. The deal, which will see Infor move into the middle tier of the ERP market, could now precipitate further merger and acquisition activity across the sector.
Golden Gate Capital has already taken at least five companies private in the last two years, and overall has probably brought some 14 vendors together. It is an aggressive consolidator, but to date has tried to keep a solid vertical focus. All of its ERP products are being grouped under the Infor Global branding, which includes applications such as Lilly Software, MAPICS, and Agilisys.

As an example of Infor's existing vertical strengths, it claims that some 73% of tier 1 and 2 automotive suppliers already use Infor solutions. Additional areas that it focuses on are distribution and the make-to-order manufacturing business, as well as process manufacturing such as brewing.

The terms of the deal are US$11.10 per share, valuing Geac at US$1 billion, and this is certainly a premium on the share price, both today and over the last year. The pressure has been on the medium-sized ERP vendors for some time now, with maintenance revenues ? essential for ongoing product development ? being squeezed. Size matters in the ERP market, which is changing in that prospective customers are starting to look at financial viability of vendors as being at least as important as the fit of the product to their requirements.

While SAP and Oracle currently fight at the very top end of the market, in the middle we now have SSA (another consolidator, with Baan probably one of the better known players to have been brought into its stable), Lawson (still in the throes of acquiring Sweden's Intentia), Microsoft Business Solutions, and now Infor plus Geac. Lower down the ERP market there are still a large number of niche players, many of whom are still perfectly viable in terms of continuing customer support and product development.

Spending on ERP is starting to rise again, as organizations review the applications that were deployed to meet the Y2K deadline, and the market is on the rise. Further M&A activity can be expected over the coming year as the participants work out the optimal combination of brain and brawn to succeed.

Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)

This message does not make me particulary hopeful... :( Way too many companies are owned and run by casino players these days. Whatever happened to real "entrepeneurship"... *sigh*

Thanks for the info Flip!

I just found out Infor is paying $ 1.4 billion in cash for SSA Global and knowing BAAN Company was purchased for a mere $ 200 million in 2003, this is a nice ROI for the owners of SSA Global.
I guess Mike Greenough can start thinking about playing golf for the rest of his life once this deal is closed later this year :).

Regards,

Edwin

Some interesting piece of chronology -

Baan sold to Invensys - Around June-July 2000

Invensys sells Baan to SSA Global - Around June-July-2003

Now Infor takes over SSA Global - May-2006

It seems that Baan products stay with its new owners for not more than 3 years. !

...Infor is paying $ 1.4 billion in cash for SSA Global... BAAN Company was purchased for a mere $ 200 million...

Edwin, I think the price for Baan was $135 million (rounded up $140) which makes the SSA purchase 10 times bigger or about twice what Invensys paid.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of the Baan software with the new owners. Whilst SSA kept Baan alive with their milk-the-support strategy, they did not expand the usage at all nor did they manage to move existing customers on to LN (or even to Baan V).

This was a very clever strategy has rewarded them handsomely but it leaves the new owners with a customer base that in the main has an almost 10 year old software release (vast majority of users have 4c4 or earlier.)

Perhaps it's the thirsty/hungry customer base with 10 yo technology for which Infor have paid $1.4billion? They may have Sales people who really want the challenge of selling an old product that has been passed down/on by a succession of companies.

Will they invest serious money in developing it further or will they continue the support-milking until it stops lactating?

Terry

This was a very clever strategy has rewarded them handsomely but it leaves the new owners with a customer base that in the main has an almost 10 year old software release (vast majority of users have 4c4 or earlier.)

Perhaps it's the thirsty/hungry customer base with 10 yo technology for which Infor have paid $1.4billion? They may have Sales people who really want the challenge of selling an old product that has been passed down/on by a succession of companies.

Terry

Terry,

More than 80% of the installed base is still on b40_c4 or earlier so that is about 4,800 customers worldwide.

As I understand it correctly the $1.4 billion has been financed with loans from two major financial institutions in the US. I am concerned this will put a very heavy financial burden on the new company Infor/SSA Global and there may not be much left for product development.
We just have to wait and see what the real intentions of Infor are.

Regards,

Edwin

... Infor is paying $ 1.4 billion in cash for SSA Global ... BAAN Company was purchased for a mere $ 200 million in 2003, this is a nice ROI for the owners of SSA Global.

Edwin, I think the price for Baan was $135 million (rounded up $140) which makes the SSA purchase 10 times bigger or about twice what Invensys paid.

SSA Global was/is more than Baan. There are many more products in their portfolio. People who had stock options from the very beginning also could have gained a lot of money. Indeed it wasn't me :cool:

Kind regards,
Dick

I think there is much more below than what we really see.

This analysis by P. J. jakovljevic throws more light.!

Hi green555,

Thanks a lot for sharing this rather extensive document.
I would say the timing is perfect (and perhaps too perfect :)).
Hopefully it will take away the concerns as I have already been in contact with a BAAN IV customer who has decided to speed up the process of moving away from SSA BAAN right after the take over news last Monday.
Personally I am afraid more will follow and SSA Global should do everything in its power to prevent this from happening as partners of Microsoft Business Solutions have already been instructed to go after the SSA BAAN installed base.

It is going to be an interesting year in the BAAN jungle!

Regards,

Edwin

Motley Fool
SSA Global Wants Some Privacy
Wednesday May 17, 2:31 pm ET
By Tom Taulli


SSA Global (Nasdaq: SSAG - News) knows M&A. Over the past few years, the company has gone the merger and acquisition route by snapping up a myriad of companies like Infinium, Ironside, Baan, EXE, and Epiphany.
Yesterday, SSA announced its biggest deal yet -- that is, the company is selling out to Infor in a cash deal for about $1.4 billion, or $19.50 per share. It was only in May 2005 that SSA went public with an offering price of $11, and the current stock price is $19.08.

SSA is a leading provider of enterprise software applications, helping with such things as customer management, enterprise resource management (ERP), and supply chain management. The company targets mid-market customers, which are defined in terms of revenues of $100 million to $1 billion. As for Infor, it has a similar profile; in fact, it is also the result of a variety of acquisitions.

The combination will result in $1.6 billion in annual revenues, which will make the new company No. 3 in the enterprise software space. The two top players, of course, are Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL - News) and SAP (NYSE: SAP - News).

Because Info is a private company (although backed by private equity firms), this deal results in SSA going private. This is a smart move. An acquisition of this size is very complex -- involving integration of different cultures and product lines. Customers often get skittish and revenues may flatten somewhat. Obviously, this is a scenario Wall Street does not like to see.

Interested about the impact this might have on the major players in the industry, I chatted yesterday with Zach Nelson, the CEO and cofounder of NetSuite, an ERP software provider. "Every ecosystem needs a bottom feeder," he told me. "The big players like Oracle and SAP should not be scared."

That is, the core strategy of SSA and Infor has been to buy slow-growth companies or even those that are struggling. Obviously, these companies have low valuations. Yet they also have loyal customer bases and useful technologies. The hope is that by combining these companies there may ultimately be more value in the whole than the scattered parts. And, so far, given the valuation of SSA since its IPO, the strategy has worked.

The problem facing SSA/Infor now is, with the enterprise software industry maturing, getting new customers means taking away market share from competitors. However, having a customer leave Oracle or SAP would be a costly and time-consuming process. And, given that SSA/Infor has a hodgepodge product line, what are the real benefits?

Actually, the distraction of the SSA merger is probably good news for Oracle and SAP. Integrating two companies of the size of SSA/Infor can easily take a year. Then again, the real play may be to bulk up and eventually sell out to Oracle or SAP anyway.

See this

http://www.amrresearch.com/Content/View.asp?pmillid=19465

First Oracle bought PeopleSoft, which bought JD Edwards. Then Lawson bought Intentia. And now Infor is buying SSA Global.

According to the deal terms, the combined Infor-SSA Global represents $1.6B in revenue, with Infor expected to pay $19.50 a share for SSA. The acquisition elevates Infor to a Top 3 slot in the enterprise application market for companies with revenue from $20M to $2B (see the AMR Research Alert article “Infor Buys SSA Global—and Then There Were Three?”).

While this move can be dubbed as “the assembler nabbing the consolidator,” the market needs to look past the overwhelming confusion that the marriage of two like-minded companies with large product libraries brings and examine the potential alteration to the software landscape that it carries.

As with the acquisitions that both companies have been through (this is Infor’s 20th in the past 3 years, and SSA has been through 12 in the past 5 years), existing customers stand to benefit. Here’s a look at how.

What Infor customers get

Infor further rounds out its product portfolio, which has, to this point, been mainly ERP and supply chain focused. It adds capabilities that have traditionally been subjects for best-of-breed versus ERP suite debates. Consider the following:

CRM—Infor will push the Epiphany and Ironside products that SSA acquired into its base for configurator, sales, marketing, and service coordination and management functions.

Supply chain execution—The EXE, WarehouseBOSS, and Provia applications complement well the Infor products for the wholesale distribution market (daly.commerce, NxTrend, and Aperum), as well as other verticals by providing warehouse management systems (WMS), transportation management systems (TMS), and supply chain execution and event management.

Product lifecycle management (PLM)—While Infor had acquired Formation Systems for specification management in 2005, SSA Global brings a more rounded PLM footprint that includes product data management (PDM) and content and document change management to which Infor’s discrete customers can look forward.

Human capital management (HCM)—Infor now has access to the SSA workforce management product set that includes managing processes for employee recruitment, compensation, benefits, self-service, learning, and performance management tracking.

What SSA Global customers get

SSA Global customers, especially those in the process industries, are now exposed to products that fill core areas in managing manufacturing and supply chain operations, such as the following:

Enterprise asset management (EAM)-Infor’s acquisition of Datastream earlier this year had been well received by the user base. Expect that momentum to continue to the SSA base, with the majority finding fleet asset tracking and management as well as maintenance planning attractive.
Advanced planning and scheduling—One of the crown jewels in the Infor portfolio is the Fygir advanced planning and scheduling suite. It is one of the few products with a proven track record in handling the complex constraint modeling challenges of the process industries.

Sales and operations planning (S&OP)-Capitalizing on the functionality Infor received in the Mercia acquisition, SSA customers can now get better visibility into demand, translating that into their internal planning functions.

Process PLM-The Optiva product, acquired from Formation Systems, will augment the SSA PLM footprint with functionality for process manufacturing, such as formula development, raw material sourcing, and effective communication of recipes to manufacturing.

While many are skeptical about an assembler acquiring a consolidator, some organizational synergies should be highlighted. While Infor has made a science of assimilating acquisitions, there are some mutual lessons to be shared. For example, SSA Global is very adept at cross-selling within its base, having experienced success with the EXE and Epiphany products. On the flip side, Infor has demonstrated it can grow a business, adding products through acquisition and continuing growth each quarter with new logo customers and retained clients.

Operation “Next 120 Days” starts now

While the acquisition still has the requisite legal channels to go through before closing, the next four months will be the toughest for Infor. This is the largest acquisition the company has had to digest yet. The keys to success with not only customers and prospects, but with the acquisition as a whole, are as follows:

Infor must articulate the product roadmap for process and discrete subverticals, and answer the question for users, “What will new customers buy?” SSA had answered this question by consolidating its products into two platforms: ERP LN and ERP LX. Will Infor add to or continue this? Customers should also press Infor on whether it will continue its no sunset practices with respect to this portfolio.
While other ERP vendors, like Oracle and SAP, have service enabled the peripheries of their products to ease integration with partner applications in their ecosystems (see the AMR Research Alert article “SAP Industry Value Network for Chemicals: A New Paradigm, and a New Dilemma”), Infor must service enable its own products to foster interapplication data exchange within its own product portfolio. The company must communicate the future of SSA’s Open Architecture and its fit within the emerging SOA strategy to remain successful with customers that want to continue filling gaps in their existing IT architectures with product from a single vendor.
Infor now owns the majority of the installed base of iSeries ERP customers (Geac, Mapics XA, BPCS, and Marcam’s Prism, to name a few). It can continue to service these clients and extend the lifecycle of customers’ investments by carrying on the progress that SSA Global had made with IBM’s WebSphere. Infor also has to accommodate its installed base of Progress Software-based systems. Articulating a sustainable and coherent strategy that reconciles the needs of customers investing in Progress Software and IBM platforms is essential.

As witnessed with other acquisitions in this space, Infor must balance the sales forces between both organizations and develop a clear strategy for handling large accounts and avoid in-fighting.

Is this a game-changer?

While Infor sorts out this acquisition, don’t be surprised (or fooled) if others like Oracle and SAP, or even those with single core business platforms like IFS and QAD, try to woo Infor customers. They will likely pursue new midmarket opportunities with messages about the benefits of their single data models or single application framework strategies.

Infor customers and prospects should look beyond these sales strategies and evaluate the realities of their competitors’ product development roadmaps and the evolving dynamics of the enterprise software market against Infor’s own messaging and roadmap.

For the past few years, AMR Research has tracked the lack of innovation in the enterprise software market. We’ve observed how enterprise suite vendors have adopted the strategy of acquisition to fill what some call “white space” in their product portfolios because it is faster and more cost effective than building the functionality themselves. Many ERP vendors also see acquisitions as a way to enter new markets, expand their customer bases, and gain the critical mass necessary to remain competitive in a market where size matters (see the AMR Research Alert article “The Enterprise Application Market Is Destroying Its Fragile Ecosystem”).

ERP vendors are extending themselves beyond their comfort zones of being the financial backbone of the business, storing necessary corporate planning, financial, materials, and HR data. They are now expanding into functions that can calibrate and coordinate a global supply network, such as CRM, PLM, production operations, and the planning and scheduling functions of SCM—functions that traditionally best-of-breed vendors have dominated.

This trend is flowing downstream to the midmarket where buyers are now looking beyond core ERP functionality, making overdue investments in SCM, CRM, and PLM. Buyers are evaluating not just the individual ROI from applications, but the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their total IT investments. They are looking to get as much as possible from one vendor instead of dealing with the complexity and cost of stitching together multiple applications to run their businesses. With that in mind, Infor now joins Oracle and SAP in having to convince enterprise buyers that it can deliver beyond its marketing messages—customers want low TCO support of their key business processes.

Right now, it’s up to Infor to either be an innovator that provides a plethora of options to the midmarket, or just another consolidator.

Well, I think this is a set back to SSA LN, which many were considering to look for upgradation and add ons. But many of those will put a 'hold' policy and may not be sympathetic to the idea that, eventually in next 3-5 years agian it will be oracle or sap takeover news. (BTW SAP is in news for take-over from IBM)
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/41744f42-e6a0-11da-a36e-0000779e2340.html

But I do not understand why Aberdeen is proposing go ahead in its analysis?

Well at least for time being I would like to see the product raodmap and freebees /promos associated with it.


mark

The tangled web of ERP system ownership - Opinion

Looking at ownership history reveals interesting connections

By David Watson, Auckland | Friday, 9 June, 2006

Last month, Infor bought SSA Global Technologies, which had itself bought Baan and several other business software vendors a few years ago (SSA also survived Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2000, but that’s another story).

The acquisition is just one of many that have taken place in the IT industry and it won’t be the last. And while sizeable — it’s worth $US1.4 billion (NZ$2.2 billion) — it’s hardly the biggest to have taken place in recent years; both Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft (US$10 billion) and HP’s purchase of Compaq ($US25 billion) were much larger.

What makes the Infor-SSA deal a bit different is the tangled, interconnected, splice-and-dice nature of the various components and systems that will transfer to Infor.
One of the most interesting aspects of the saga is the role played by Geac.

In November, Geac was acquired by private equity firm Golden Gate Capital (which is also a majority shareholder in Infor). Golden Gate Capital then on-sold Geac’s ERP assets to Infor. Now, Infor is buying SSA, which just happens to be headed by Mike Greenough, who was head of Geac commercial systems, a Geac subsidiary, for eight years in the 1990s.

When Greenough joined SSA in 2001, he hired several ex-Geac executives, including Mark Rosenberg, who joined SSA in 2001 as vice president of IT and global support; Marvyn Turk, who also joined in 2001 and became SSA’s vice president of taxation and business development; Shelley Isenberg, who joined SSA in 2002 as senior vice president of acquisitions and corporate development and Warren Fletcher, another long-time Geac executive who became SSA’s North American regional president under Greenough. According to website ITJungle, in an article written in 2002, “One third of SSA GT’s executive team has come to the company directly from Geac.”

There’s even a local connection here: New Zealander Graeme Riley, who was appointed SSA’s Pacific region manager at the beginning of this year, was also a long-time Geac employee before he joined SSA in 2004.

Is there anything wrong with this? Of course not. New executives often appoint those they have previously worked with, and know and trust.

Another interesting aspect of the Infor buyout of SSA is the long and involved ownership chain involving InterBiz, a set of applications SSA acquired from CA in 2002 and which will now pass into Infor’s hands.

The InterBiz product set included PRMS, an AS/400 mainframe OS-based system that was first developed by a long-forgotten vendor, IR, for the S/34 OS in 1975. Then called just RMS (Resource Management System), it fell into the hands of Professional Computing Resources in 1978. In 1986 Pansophic Systems acquired Professional Computing Resources and rewrote RMS for AS/400, renaming it PRMS (Pansophic Resource Management System). CA bought Pansophic in 1991 and later integrated the PRMS system into its InterBiz set of products, before selling InterBiz to SSA a decade later.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with that — the software industry is known for constant mergers and acquisitions, and any product that’s been around for 30 years is likely to have changed hands a few times. As long as users’ needs are met, changes of ownership are no big deal.

The never-ending purchase and sale process of software companies just goes to show how dynamic and fast-moving the industry is and while the overall trend is towards consolidation, there won’t be the outcome in other industries, such as the car industry, where dozens of providers have merged into a handful.

That’s because small software companies will continue to be started — it’s a low-barrier-to-entry sector — and because software will always be more than just a commodity.

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/FAF1D8010DB8C963CC257181000BCFB8

Invensys, SSA and now Infor.....give us a break guys.

We are infor troubled times ahead.

Hi,

Check out this link if you want to know more about the intended integration of SSA Global by Infor:

http://www.infor.com/ssacustomers

This site has been set up specifically for SSA BAAN customers.

Regards,

Edwin