Hi,

They are doing it again!
Infor is planning to do an IPO and is going to NASDAQ.
This should happen in 2010 and the boys are going to cash in.
It happened with BAAN Company and also with SSA Global (although they never went to the stock market but they were still able to cash in big time).

See the link (in Dutch): http://www.telegraaf.nl/dft/nieuws_dft/5906786/__Moeder_Baan_wil_beursgang__.html?p=19,1

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

More good than bad - if baan is part of a company that is publicly traded on Nasdaq, it will have more "credibility" - it's still a "best-of-breed" contender.

I think this is a bad thing. Infor's strategy was to use LN to position themselves for this IPO years ago but they were never able to perform as well as SSA did in terms of net new sales. SSA was able to sell LN to Infor but Infor continually dropped the ball with their inability to market and sell the product. Infor has been downsizing the sales staff that supports the LN product and in my opinion, gave up on it a year or so ago. They focus much more on the smaller ERP products they own. There is a tremendous lack of Baan/LN talent at Infor. Even if the IPO generates interests and working capital, Infor doesn't have the talent to follow through with it. They missed the boat that SSA sailed off in and where left with an anchor...LN.

Don't get me wrong. I love the functionality of the product. I have spent most of my career working with it, but mismanagement has killed it.

The IPO is a bad thing as the company will shift their focus further and further away from the product. Management at Infor already has too many things to concentrate on. Shareholders will just add to it.