Despite Oracle’s bid to buy out People Soft, who has made its intentions clear about merging with J.D. Edwards, this big-fish-eats-little-fish scenario isn’t impacting business as usual — for the time being.
J.D. Edwards and IBM announced this week that they will create a slew of new enterprise resource management offerings designed for small- and mid-sized businesses. The two companies have teamed up to create two new offerings already, as delivered through the duo’s Global Business Value Team.
The Global Business Value Team is a set of dedicated professional resources from both companies who will define, launch and direct the implementation of integrated, low-cost computing solutions that address the unique challenges faced by small and mid-sized businesses. This team will deliver integrated consulting and industry templates, software and hardware, hosting, utility capabilities and other options, such as financing to minimize the upfront costs involved in developing new levels of business efficiency.
Les Wyatt, J.D. Edwards senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said small- and medium-sized businesses need more than plain vanilla applications that fail to address specific business and industry needs.
“The Global Business Value Team combines the strengths of J.D. Edwards 5 ERP, SCM and CRM software with IBM Business Consulting Services and IBM’s on demand architecture to deliver the right solutions at the right price point for this market,” Wyatt said.
Marc Lautenbach, IBM general manager of global small and Medium Business, said the company is pleased to be teaming with J.D. Edwards to deliver solutions that will help SMB customers become on demand businesses.
“Our companies have both devoted a significant amount of time talking with SMB customers to understand their unique needs” Lautenbach said. “The solutions will allow these enterprises to be more responsive, flexible and resilient — all attributes they told us were important for them.”
Like any business, smaller enterprises are feeling the pressure grow revenue, reduce inventory levels and to take costs out of their supply chain processes. To address these business needs, the first solutions from this joint effort include Automotive for SMBs and J.D. Edwards WorldSoftware Conversion for SMBs. These solutions are built around J.D. Edwards 5 ERP applications that leverage IBM’s open standards-based on-demand operating environment. The first two integrated offerings from the Global Business Value Team include:
- Automotive for SMB: To help mid-sized auto parts suppliers be more responsive to their customer’s demands and show they can be an efficient part of the supply chain, IBM and J.D Edwards have created a fully hosted solution which makes standardized automotive business processes available in an affordable hosted model.
The solution enables flexible supplier collaboration and improved cost management. Built on J.D Edwards 5 ERP applications it will be hosted by IBM in one of its secure data centers. IBM Business Consulting Services will provide customers with implementation assistance. The automotive solution will be available in the fourth quarter to customers in North and South America.
- WorldSoftware Conversion for SMB: J.D. Edwards WorldSoftware customers have been waiting for industry solutions that provide compelling value propositions based on J.D. Edwards 5 ERP applications. Transition costs, new technologies and conversions risks have all dampened the benefits of moving forward to J.D. Edwards’ newest software suites.
For existing WorldSoftware customers, the Global Business Value team will help companies convert to the rich functionality in J.D. Edwards 5 ERP while minimizing conversion costs with a pre-configured offering. This offering will include options for hosting from IBM, and J.D. Edwards conversion toolkits to reduce transition risks and costs. The pre-configured offering saves installation time and setup for customers while ensuring that installation is done correctly. Alternatively, customers will be able to leverage integrated technical platform solutions to reduce solution deployment and development should hosting not be a viable alternative.
Additional key vertical markets, offerings and programs are scheduled to be announced in the coming months. No pricing information is available at this time.
