Infor swallows two more
Infor has moved on from the SSA purchase and has bought Extensity, a financial performance management software solution and Systems Union Group, a UK focused financial and performance management system
September 01, 2006
May 15, 2006
Infor buys SSA
Infor has just bought SSA for $1.4 billion , SSA customers must be frustrated they were forced to migrate to SSA LN/LX now they have a new partner to evaluate, saying that customers were not signing up to SSA LN/LX maybe Infor can offer a better package.
One of the reasons Infor has bought SSA is their bundle of ERP software packages that SSA has bought over the last couple of years.
SSA has been trying to get customers to migrate from these packages to LN/LX
Marcam
EXE Technologies
Infinium Software
Baan
Elevon
Ironside
CA Interbiz
Max International
ManMan
In total there are 13,000 SSA customers who are wondering what now.
Infor will be the third largest ERP vendor after acquiring these ERP packages
Mapics
Frontstep
Mercia
Software
Clarus (Finance/HR)
D&B Software
Anael
Extensity
Sage and Lawson the other tier two ERP software competitors must be reevaluating their business plans as Mike Greenough, CEO of SSA mentions "In a rapidly consolidating marketplace we have seen that size and scale matter,".
January 08, 2006
Infor buys Datastream Systems
ERP provider Infor Global Solutions has signed a definitive agreement to purchase asset management vendor Datastream Systems. The move will complement Infor's current offerings and boost its presence in the ERP market, although a number of challenges still lie in store for the company.
In a proposal that has the approval of both the Infor and Datastream boards, Infor is offering a cash deal, paying $10.26 per share which would value the transaction at approximately $205 million.
Infor targets verticals within the manufacturing and distribution sectors so Datastream's asset performance management software will add complementary functionality. It is executing a strategy of growth by acquisition, and has made multiple acquisitions since 2002 to take is customer count to 18,000. With Datastream the total would rise to 24,700 across 140 countries, with Datastream adding 6,700 customers, making it one of the larger players in terms of customer numbers with annual revenue in the region of $600 million. That would probably put it into fourth place in the ERP market in terms of size after SAP, Oracle, and SSA Global.
There is a developing trend for vendors to retire from the harsh environment of the public company in favor of privatization backed by equity firms. SSA Global is the best known and its experience has been positive. With cash behind it and freedom from having to address short-term shareholder demands, it was able to under a highly successful transformation before going public again last year.
Infor is executing a similar strategy in that it is owned by private equity firms that are funding its growth-by-acquisition strategy. Lead shareholder
However, Infor has major challenges ahead. Even though it has acquired several companies, it has not done much to integrate them or explain its long-term technical and business roadmap, other than saying it will develop a services-oriented architecture that will make upgrades and integration easier. The multiple acquisitions Geac has made and done little with also have to be factored in. This is where its private status should start to pay, enabling the time and privacy to develop the next stage of its strategy.
In a proposal that has the approval of both the Infor and Datastream boards, Infor is offering a cash deal, paying $10.26 per share which would value the transaction at approximately $205 million.
Infor targets verticals within the manufacturing and distribution sectors so Datastream's asset performance management software will add complementary functionality. It is executing a strategy of growth by acquisition, and has made multiple acquisitions since 2002 to take is customer count to 18,000. With Datastream the total would rise to 24,700 across 140 countries, with Datastream adding 6,700 customers, making it one of the larger players in terms of customer numbers with annual revenue in the region of $600 million. That would probably put it into fourth place in the ERP market in terms of size after SAP, Oracle, and SSA Global.
There is a developing trend for vendors to retire from the harsh environment of the public company in favor of privatization backed by equity firms. SSA Global is the best known and its experience has been positive. With cash behind it and freedom from having to address short-term shareholder demands, it was able to under a highly successful transformation before going public again last year.
Infor is executing a similar strategy in that it is owned by private equity firms that are funding its growth-by-acquisition strategy. Lead shareholder
Golden Gate
However, Infor has major challenges ahead. Even though it has acquired several companies, it has not done much to integrate them or explain its long-term technical and business roadmap, other than saying it will develop a services-oriented architecture that will make upgrades and integration easier. The multiple acquisitions Geac has made and done little with also have to be factored in. This is where its private status should start to pay, enabling the time and privacy to develop the next stage of its strategy.
November 07, 2005
Infor snaps up Geac erp software
Geac bites the dust ,the company has been purchased by geac for one billion dollars .Geac was not really going anywhere no real plans ,investment to move forward with clients quite content to have software that was ten years old.
San Francisco-based Golden Gate Capital will pay $11.10 per share for Geac, a 27 percent premium on Geac's Friday closing price on the Nasdaq stock exchange (ticker symbol: GEAC). The companies expect the deal to close in early 2006.
Geac, based in Markham, Ontario, bills its products as "software for the CFO." The company had income of $77 million last year on revenue of $444.4 million, mostly from the enterprise applications business that Infor is acquiring. That business drove 80 percent of Geac's revenue last year, the company said in its annual report.
Infor is becoming a formidable player in the ERP market with a portfolio built through acquisitions. The private company, with headquarters in Alpharetta, Georgia, focuses tightly on the midmarket manufacturing and distribution industry, selling mainly to customers with less than $250 million in annual revenue. The software lines it will pick up from Geac include System21, RatioPlan, Runtime and Streamline.
Before Geac, Infor's largest acquisition was its purchase earlier this year of Mapics Inc., for around $350 million in stock. Infor has 2,300 employees worldwide and 18,000 customers.
Golden Gate Capital plans to form two new business groups around Geac's remaining assets, which will be held by a new company with a chief executive office to be named prior to the transaction's closing. A financial applications unit will focus on Geac's Enterprise Server, SmartStream, Anael, Extensity and Comshare products, while an industry-specific applications group concentrates on serving industries.
August 09, 2005
ERP vendor Infor on the hunt again?
We've just seen the beginning of the acquisitions of Infor Global Solutions. The ERP software company, which has been in existence for barely three years, has made dozens of acquisitions over the past three years, including OS/400 software vendors like MAPICS, BRAIN, Daly.commerce, and Lilly Software Associates. But the company plans many more as part of its strategy to become the premiere provider of ERP software for manufacturers and distributors.
Infor Global Solutions was spun out of Systems & Computer Technology, a Malvern, Pennsylvania, provider of hardware and software to educational institutions, in June 2002. Soon thereafter, the company changed its name to Agilisys, which it kept until September 2004, when it changed its name to Infor Global Solutions. (The name Agilisys was simply too close in spelling and pronunciation to Agilysys, the Cleveland-based iSeries distributor.)
Over the past three years, Infor has to come focus exclusively on providing technology solutions to two types of companies: manufacturers and distributors. "That's the only market we're in," says Tom Lynch, Infor's chief technology officer and senior vice president of corporate marketing, adding that Infor is already the largest software company in the world to focus on these two groups. "Suffice it to say, there are incredible synergies between the two, especially considering the dynamics of the market."
Within that narrow group of users, Infor offers an array of solutions. It offers MAPICS ERP products, formerly called XA, to medium to large discrete manufacturers (companies that make things, as opposed to process manufacturers, which deal more in bulk goods, like milk or grain). It has a strong practice in the automotive manufacturing specialty, having acquired several vendors, including Trans4M, and BRAIN, which developed an OS/400-based ERP for companies in the automotive supply chain. It also offers a version of Essential (its ERP software brand) for food and beverage manufacturers.
The focus on manufacturing and distribution gives it an advantage over other ERP software vendors that do not have such specialized offerings, such as SAP, Lynch says. "[SAP is] in oil and gas, finance and healthcare. They call themselves horizontal, and that's exactly what they are. They have 25 different industries, and they're trying to stretch it out."
Infor also has plans to "stretch out" its offerings, but in a different way. According to Lynch, the company plans to make additional acquisitions to "fill out" its product portfolio, to "go deep and broad across the two markets that we're in," Lynch says. This is a key component of its "assembler" strategy, in which it seeks to integrate some of its existing products--or simply strategic areas of existing products--to newly acquired products, to deliver best-of-breed functionality to its customers.
MAPICS is a good example of Infor's assembler strategy. "MAPICS was a terrific acquisition for us, a very well-positioned player in the discrete manufacturing market globally," he says. "They have a tremendous experience level, in their people and their product, a tenure of 12- to -15-year veterans that really know the business."
"Although MAPICS was very well positioned in discrete manufacturing . . . they were sorely deficient in several areas. They had no warehouse management system or logistics." As a point of proof of the need for WMS and logistics among MAPICS customers, the warehousing booth at the recent user conference in May was "mobbed" by MAPICS users, Lynch says.
The WMS and logistics application that Infor plans to pair with MAPICS is the one developed by Lilly Software Associates. That Lilly WMS will become the de-facto best-of-breed Infor WMS for discrete manufacturing ERP, Lynch says. For the distribution side of the house, Infor plans to position the WMS product it obtained from NXtrend as the preferred WMS solution.
In addition to WMS and logistics, MAPICS is also deficient in the forecasting and demand-planning area, Lynch says. The solution that Infor has in mind to fill this gap for MAPICS customers is the Merica product, which Infor acquired from the Italian ISV Finmatica in 2004.
While it has many legacy products written in a variety of different languages, Infor is focused on connecting its technologies and delivering new interfaces for them using Java. It has already rewritten one product in Java, an ERP package for smaller discrete manufacturers it acquired from Infor:Com. Now that it's been moved from a proprietary 4GL to Java, it can run on Windows, Linux, iSeries, or any other platform that runs Java, Lynch says.
The iSeries plays heavily in Infor's strategy, Lynch says. "First and foremost, it's clear we're committed to the iSeries platform. We're probably the largest active iSeries ISV that IBM has globally now. We're approaching 9,000 customers," he says. "iSeries becomes a platform where there's a tremendous amount of new products becoming available" from Infor. In late July, Infor joined IBM's ISV Advantage initiative.
The commitment to the iSeries doesn't necessarily mean that Infor plans to maintain the RPG legacy of some of its products. Infor plans to look at each product, and decide whether to keep it as is, or to rewrite it in Java. Those decisions will be made on an individual product basis, Lynch says.
"We have a plan for each product, that each product has to follow, depending on where it's coming from," he says. "If it's an old RPG product on the iSeries, that path is a little longer than something written in Java. The key is, 'Do you pass muster with your customer?'"
Lynch says Infor is passing muster with its customers, and cites a statistic that 95 percent of its customers have chosen to stay on maintenance following the acquisition of their software provider by Infor. The key, of course, will be maintaining that customer satisfaction over the long term, without getting bogged down supporting dozens of disparate applications, which would hurt Infor's profitability, and therefore put the future of the applications in jeopardy. We'll take a closer look at Infor's individual product roadmaps in future article.
