ERP Software

Sage going after Teamsystem in 650m bid

Sage has emerged as the frontrunner to acquire TeamSystem, the Italian financial software group, for up to €650 million.

Final bids for TeamSystem are expected this Friday, the business that has been put up for sale by Bain Capital. Sage was expected to outbid HgCapital and Cinven.

The Newcastle business employs 1,200 people at its Newcastle head office and revealed in a management statement that its debts were down from £305m at the end of March to £280m by the end of June.

Guy Berruyer is to take over the role of CEO next year following long-time head Paul Walker's decision to step down at the end of the year. Walker took the job in 1994 and is one of the longest serving FTSE-100 company CEOs, but is leaving to pursue other projects. Berruyer was promoted from the role of head of Sage's mainland European operations.

Shareholders are hoping with the new management in place that Sage will announce a SaaS strategy to stop from the high end SAP Business By Design and on the lower end Netsuite from stealing market share.

Workday : CIO's should bookmark this company?

Great compliment for Workday (www.workday.com ) CIO UK has tipped the SaaS ERP company one of 20 companies to watch

"Of all the newer companies delivering a pure software-as-a-service approach to applications, Workday is the one most worth watching. First, because its roots are interesting: many key staff including CEO Dave Duffield came from PeopleSoft so they know where the bodies are buried in ERP. Second, the company is well funded so needn’t sell out to the first predator that swims alongside. Third, large-scale ERP is often seen as protected from SaaS because you somehow ‘need’ it on premise. Workday will be the acid test"

CIO : 20 companies to watch

Infor Joining The Cloud Team

Infor has announced plans for its applications running on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and adding momentum to the industry's shift away from on-premises ERP software.

Their strategy will see the next-generation versions of Infor applications start appearing on Azure in 2011.

Azure applications will also employ Infor's recently announced ION framework for data sharing between applications and BPM (business process management), allowing them to work with infor’s legacy on-premises software.

Infor is also using Microsoft's SharePoint and Silverlight technologies to build out a new user interface called CompanyOn,  which will give its many application lines a common  look and feel. CompanyOn will be a central home for BI reports and dashboards,

Overall, the partnership has benefits for both vendors, said Altimeter Group analyst Ray Wang.

"It was a huge coup for Microsoft because it shows large ISVs [independent software vendors] are still willing to bet on the Microsoft platform. It's also good for customers, in that now people are on a standardized platform, and a platform that has a future. "

Those users will benefit from the vast pool of system integrators, ISVs and developers already working with Microsoft technologies, Wang said.

But the tie-up also raises questions for other Microsoft partners, such as Epicor, which has also embraced Redmond's stack and was an early adopter of Azure.

This might force the Microsoft Dynamics VAR ecosystem to think about using Azure to host the ERP solutions they are reselling.

Infor will sell the Azure applications in multitenant form; this approach saves on system resources and allows upgrades to be pushed out to many customers at once. But Infor will also run dedicated instances for companies that desire them.