ERP Software

Sage CEO To Stand Down

Paul Walker, the chief executive of Sage software is to stand down. Mr Walker has told the board he wants to leave while he is still young enough to pursue fresh challenges

The Sage board   has hired headhunting group Russell Reynolds Associates to search for a replacement for Paul  Walker, who is one of the FTSE 100’s longest serving bosses.

 “Paul Walker has advised the board of his intention to stand down from the company in due course, after 16 years as chief executive and 26 years with the company. Paul and board will work to ensure a seamless transition and the board will make further announcement at an appropriate time.”

Oracle Adds Healthcare Functionality

Oracle said Friday it will buy Phase Forward, a software solutions provider of applications for life sciences companies and healthcare providers, in a  deal worth around $685 million.

Oracle said the acquisition is consistent with its strategy to add complimentary assets to its Oracle Health Sciences division.

The company also predicts that Phase Forward's SaaS- based integrated clinical research suite which manages clinical development Phase 1 clinical trials through regulatory submission to post-approval monitoring, will help Oracle's life science customers more effectively capture, access, and share data securely.

"The life sciences and healthcare industries are converging as they seek to control costs while accelerating patient-centered innovation," Neil de Crescenzo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Health Sciences said in a statement "Phase Forward brings outstanding products and employees with significant expertise to Oracle that will help enable the delivery of personalized medicine and value-based healthcare."

In a letter posted on Oracle's website, Crescenzo also said Phase Forward's management and employees will join Oracle as a part of the Oracle Health Sciences global business unit, ensuring the continuity of products and services delivery for Phase Forward customers. The transaction is expected to close in the mid-2010.

With that war chest, Phase Forward stated acquiring companies in related fields, shelling out $11m in 2005 for Lincoln Technologies, which created software to track drug safety after they have been approved for sale by government health regulators. In September 2008, Phase Forward ponied up $40m in cash to buy Clarix, a software company that had created a Web-based interactive response technology (IRT) application suite for clinical trials, which have been traditionally managed through phone calls, not Web-based forms.

Phase Forward has quite a track record on purchasing smaller software companies that are focussed around the web. Phase Forward paid $14m to acquire Waban Software, which sold a competing set of automation and compliance tools for clinical trials with statistical analysis add-ons. And in July, it paid $11m to buy Maaguzi, which sells a set of Web-based tools to do electronic patient reported outcomes paperwork.

The combined set of Phase Forward tools have been used in over 10,000 clinical trials with more than 1 million participants by more than 300 life sciences, pharma firms and regulatory agencies and public health organizations.

Oracle expects the Phase Forward acquisition to close around the middle of 2010.

 Oracle Newsroom

Larry Ellision thoughts on the cloud

Larry Ellison likes to keep his options open; personally he can’t stand the hype of cloud computing with some great quotes such as “more fashion-driven than women's fashion and cloud computing is simply the latest fashion”.

Then on Oracle’s fiscal third quarter earnings call, Larry focuses on fusion and how the architecture can be used for on premise or the cloud.

We think once we deliver Fusion, we’re going to be well-positioned to challenge for the number one slot. One of the important things about our Fusion applications is they are designed not simply to run on premise, which of course they do. But they’re all on-demand or if you prefer, cloud-ready. So we’ll be delivering those applications, both by selling the software directly — kind of the old way of doing it, which is still the most popular way, by the way. We’ll be selling the Fusion applications integrated with our hardware, our servers, and our storage and our networks. We’ll be selling it on the cloud, all modern service-orientated 21st century stuff.

Talk about keeping your options open Larry is right about cloud and the fashion industry though.

Lawson joins the cloud team

Lawson Software announced a partnership that will make its ERP  and other business applications available on Amazon Web Services' cloud-computing service.

Lawson's S3 Enterprise Management System, M3 Enterprise Management System and Talent Management application will be hosted on  Amazon's cloud for new Lawson customers.

Lawson is copying SAP business by design idea and offering prospects the option to test drive Lawson ERP software online for two weeks.

Pricing will stay the same the same as their on premise licence costs , Lawson stated that the company does not  "intend to use pricing on the cloud as a loss leader or to buy market share."

Lawson's cloud strategy is a sound one for the customers it targets, said Ray Wang, partner with the analyst firm Altimeter Group. "Honestly, these are companies that should focus on their business and let the infrastructure go to the lowest-cost provider," he said. "[Amazon] is one of the places."