Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Infor Acquires Lawson Software

Over the past few months rumors have circulated that Infor was looking for the best fit software company to acquire to complement its business. Infor has over 75,000 customers in a number of verticals ranging from distribution to healthcare, automotive to manufacturing. Finally comes word of an agreement for Lawson to be acquired by Golden Gate Capital (GGC Software Holdings, Inc.) and Infor for a deal valued at $2 billion. Click here to read the press release.

The fit for Infor and Lawson is that they both have worldwide user bases that generate huge cash flow streams. Lawson bring to the new partnership a CLOUD offering for internal and external applications. The External offering enables companies to test the Cloud concept before considering a more extensive offering such as Amazon EC2. The Internal Cloud offering offers the business user the opportunity to consolidate their IT infrastructure, while reducing their costs and reallocating IT staff to more strategic activities. To read more about this offering click here.

Within a very short space of time, the electrical industry has witnessed a couple of high profile companies be either rolled up (Activant being purchased and emerging as Epicor) or making an acquisition (Infor along with a Venture Capital company acquiring Lason).
The question becomes, what does this mean to electrical distributors? Will these companies continue to focus and allocate resources to improving their systems? Will customer support be strengthened? Will new products be offered and the systems be more robust? Or will the companies be more financially driven to enable returns to their shareholders?

While we wish each company the very best, what do you think the affect will be if you own an Activant product (P-21, Trade Service Systems Array, Eclipse or Eagle) or an Epicor product or a Lawson product or an Infor SXE or SXA+?

And how does a Cloud offering affect your approach to your ERP needs? Do you foresee yourself considering a Cloud offering in the next 3-5 years?

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