I thought it was interesting to see the relative importance of Baan ERP as it is sold and re-sold. Baan is more or less treated like a step child in a number of these acquisitions and more so currently. Couple of reasons that let me to make this conclusion are.



There were really no major improvements announced for the Baan product line. There were information tracks on the new FP's (feature packs) for ERP Ln. As predictable no further improvements planned for Baan 4 or 5.
The market strategy seemed to be centered around SOA and how the customers can leverage the functionality in other Infor packages rather then investing in to product enhancements.
There was minimal representation for Baan when it came to education tracks. I thought some of the baan IV/ERP Ln differences were repeats from previous years.
There were about 35-40 exhibitor booths that displayed various complimentary product offerings. I was able to find only 1 or 2 exhibitors that had anything to do with Baan.
There were about 20-30 Kiosks showcasing all the Infor products and ERP Ln was in 3 of them, if I remember right. Here too the emphasis was heavily on the Infor Myday offering and how it is going to revolutionize the user interface.
Some of my personal thoughts based on the above and some other observations.


Infor is trying to cross-sell the products in to the existing product base. There is no dispute about this and may be the right approach to go after the low hanging fruit.
It seemed like Infor is pretty happy that there are a number of MK customers planning to upgrade to ERP Ln. I dont have the statistics on how many MK users are currenty out there. ERP ln is very appealing to MK/Baan IV customers but may not be to a non-infor customer.
Infor is trying to do-it-all-I can only talk specific to Baan here. This is based on the fact that there are very limited amount of partners showcasing their capabilities. SAP recently came up with something called echo-hub where the partners can sell their product and service capabilities. This is done after the success of some models like salesforce.com which rely heavily on partners for innovation.

I would like to make a Disclaimer: Most of the above observations are made during my visit to the Inforum 2008 conference. Please note that my intention is not to encourage/discourage any current/future customers. These are just one person views and should not be the basis for any major decisions . I will be glad to discuss further if needed. You can email at chakri at solec dot net.

You forgot to mention "MyDay". Seems like everything I sat in mentioned SOA, MyDay and LN. :)

Putting Branding aside (Triton, Baan, IBaan, SSA Baan, Infor ERP, Infor ERPln) we are talking about the same product. Release 4c4 is still being worked on, and that release is 6a5. The 5 is minor releases mostly comprized of bug fixes. The a is minor enhancements and new features. (Personally I think that the Feature Packs should increment this). And the 6 is major upgrade.

Under the previous owners, 4c4 was suppose to be retired. Infor has provided upgrade tools to help go to the newer versions, and new technology for those who do not wish to upgrade, promising to keep two versions supported. Most of the current client base do not want to be forced to update and reapply their customizations.

Maybe if Microsoft offered maintenance fees on XP, we would not be forced into upgrading to Vista. The difference is with Microsoft we don't have much choice, what else are you going to run. With Infor, if their client were to upgrade, they would also look at other vendors.

I don't think you should view Baan IV and ERPln as two different product, but two versions of the same product.

Well you can consider them two versions of the same product, but I fell there are enough technical differences to be considered different products. While they also will continue to support 4c4 they were sure to let you know you are on the bottom of the totem pole to get new updates - even though from what I could tell the majority was still on 4c4. And if you are on 4c4 A&D you are the bottom of the bottom of the totem pole - don't expect to get a ln version anytime soon. While I do not fault them for this logic, I am disappointed.

Lets look at it from a different perspective. Let's imagine for a moment that they are going to release a c5 or d1 version of Baan IV with significant changes. Would it not be like LN with a different name? Would customers move to it? Would the development path continue without customers upgrading to it?

The technical differences grew over the years. Any product ususally has one development trunk, and only supports the older version for a limited time. Baan IV grew into Baan V, and then into Baan VI. Infor different in the fact that it will still support Baan IV, and they are profiding new technology back to it. I think that is more than others vendors would do.

Maybe if everyone stayed on Windows 95, and the vendors who supported it refused to move their products to 98. We may still have two versions of Windows as different products.

I just don't agree with the original comment that Baan has it's own product line, and ERPln is a seperate product line. It is not two seperate development lines.

First paragraph - at the conference I learned that special features will be (in some) not in all cases backward ported to Baan IV. But this will always be the last step in the product life cycle. As I stated I do not hold this against Infor.

Yes they still do support Baan IV - that is customer driven. I do not believe Infor wants to give up this customer base - plus the maintenance money. Simple business decision. The problem is that they want to push to migrate to LN - I do not blame Infor for wanting to consolidate on ERPln.

What I am disappointed in is the time it takes to port everything backwards or to create a LN version we could use. Infor wants everyone to convert, but there a lot of us who can not convert because Infor does not have a LN version we can use. So to infor I would say "Quit preaching at me to convert when you can not provide me a tool to convert to". As it is it may be too late for us - they have promised a LN version to us for years, but have never come through. If things go as I suspect we will convert to another tool.

We will just have to agree to disagree on the last point. :)

No, we can not agree to disagree. Because I agree with everything you said.

What I disagree with is chakri_b in his first statement about it being two different products and development has stopped. For instance, many are waiting for the Automotive version to be able to upgrade from IV. That is not going on in another product, it is the upgrade path from IV to VI. It has taken awhile (5 years maybe), but it is still being developed.

You and I have been around long enough to experience the same things, so it would be hard to disagree. You make a very good point that the localizations have not been brought up to the latest level. And in that context, it is still an upgrade. :D

What I disagree with is chakri_b in his first statement about it being two different products and development has stopped. For instance, many are waiting for the Automotive version to be able to upgrade from IV. That is not going on in another product, it is the upgrade path from IV to VI. It has taken awhile (5 years maybe), but it is still being developed.

I agree with that also - it is still being developed on and the Automotive version is suppose to be ready late this year or early next year. So yes it is being developed on and it is in the upgrade path.

Mark & William-Thanks for commenting and providing your views.

Here is what I meant
1. "As predictable there are no improvement for baan4 or baan5"-I dont expect Infor to make any feature improvements to baan 4 or baan5 because the upgrade path is to Ln.
2. "No Major improvements to ERP Ln"- I am not saying that the development has stopped completely. I have been a Baan company Alumni and have been working on Baan applications for over 13 years now. I have seen times when the Baan application was being enriched with functionality whether it is for various verticals or expanding/adding various modules. It is just a disappointment, in the current context. On the other hand the other aspect that a Baan customer can be happy about is that the whole SOA architecture/framework will be provided for free. As Infor enables each of its products for the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) customers will be able to easily tap in to functionality of other Infor products. As an enterprise if you dont have a SOA architecture in place this will be a good way to start because the framework is free, aslo the toolset to develop further integrations is very reasonably priced so that you can integrate non-infor applications as well.