CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
27 September 2004
Company News
SSA Global Achieves Significant Progress In Market-Driven Product Strategy
SSA GlobalT , briefed customers on the company's success in delivering new business value through strong execution of its year-old strategic product roadmap.
Speaking at the SSA Global Client Forum in Philadelphia, Cory A. Eaves, chief technology officer for SSA Global, reported that since launching its product strategy in September 2003, SSA Global has achieved significant milestones in all core areas of its product vision.
"SSA Global stands out in the enterprise software industry for the soundness of its product vision and our ability and commitment to deliver sustained progress that meets the needs of customers today and into the future," said Eaves. "We have delivered on our promise to enhance the value of our customer's currently installed systems and to protect their IT investment for the future."
"At last year's Global Client Forum, we laid out a long-term product roadmap structured around delivering steady progress in four key areas: convergence of functionally similar products; modernization of our solutions based on industry-standard, open and modern technologies; integration of extension products into our core enterprise resource planning applications; and a continued focus on enhancing the industry-specific functionality of our solutions," said Eaves. "Today, I'm pleased to report progress in each focus area and to reiterate our pledge to sustain the current tempo of releases that solve the pressing business problems facing our customers."
Convergence -In August, SSA Global announced the first of two convergence platforms for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) customers. SSA ERP LN version 6.1 is the convergence platform for several of the company's ERP platforms, including SSA Baan, SSA MK and SSA Manman. Development is nearing completion for the 2005 launch of SSA ERP LX the convergence platform for high-volume, mixed mode and process customers, including those currently using SSA BPCS, SSA PRMS, SSA PRISM and SSA Infinium MM/PR. Similarly, SSA Global recently released SSA Financial Management version 2.0, a global, enterprise-class financial management solution, delivering a platform for all SSA Global financial functionality.
Modernization -In the past year, SSA Global has made strides in improving its technical architecture, including a new web-native user interface, true web service integration capabilities, and integrated workflow capabilities. The company has strengthened strategic relationships with several key industry leaders, including IBM and Cognos. Through the strategic alliance with IBM, both companies will invest significant development resources as SSA Global standardizes on IBM WebSphere technology to streamline integrations and provide a comprehensive portal infrastructure. The long-term relationship with Cognos has been strengthened with the adoption of ReportNet, a Cognos product that offers customers a more modern and flexible business reporting capability. SSA Global's new browser-based user interface provides customers with a consistent, modern and configurable user interface to improve worker productivity and streamline migrations to new releases, thus reducing implementation time.
Integration -Through acquiring, developing and enhancing a set of core extension products, SSA Global has responded to the industry need to leverage core ERP capability with new functionality in specialized areas, such as supply chain planning and execution, supplier relationship management, financial management, collaborative order management, corporate performance management, customer relationship management and product lifecycle management. Over the past 12 months, SSA Global has delivered integration from its extension products, including SSA CPM, SSA CRM, SSA PLM, SSA SCM and SSA SRM, to both of its core ERP systems, SSA ERP LN and SSA ERP LX.
Industry Focus -Over the past year, SSA Global has made acquisitions and delivered new products that expand the depth and breadth of the company's industry focus. Key milestones include the acquisition of Marcam last July that give SSA Global new ability to deliver value to process manufacturing companies. In addition, the launch of SSA ERP LN version 6.1 offers industry specific capabilities for customers in electronics, aerospace and defense, and industrial machinery and equipment industries. The 2005 launch of SSA ERP LX also will include new industry-specific capabilities in the process industries.
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