ERP Brain Exchange Mainly a ‘Money Thing’
04/02/2000-After nearly 200 SAP America managers leave the company in a space of a few months the industry begins to consider the reasons for
the ERP brain drain.
Enterprise Applications Consulting principal Josh Greenbaum blamed the opportunity to make more money at a start-up for the enterprise exodus, but defectees denied that this was the motivatation.
Former SAP manager Paul Melchiorre said the reason staff were jumping the ERP ship was that ERP firms were not geared for a Web-centric world.
Laurie Orlov, and analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc., said that ERP firms were not on their way out and agreed that money was making people move. Smaller or dot-com companies were offering the execs very good stock options and were luring them away from the larger entities.
Acquisitions and mergers up in 1999, says CATA
04/02/2000- CATA Alliance research pointed out that growing by merger and acquisition was a popular strategy for the Canadian software and computer service industries in 1999.
CATA reported that the two industries combined to acquire 48 companies that year, 21 of them foreign. Executive director David Paterson said that contrary to popular belief, quality Canadian firms were not always being bought out by Americans. Canadian companies were actually more aggressive than international interests in 1999. Foreign companies only bought 19 software firms.
Paterson said he expected the trend to continue and it has. In 2002, the IT industry saw a number of major merger and acquisition deals, including Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, Microsoft and Navision and more locally, CGI’s acquisition of Cognicase.
Win2000, Bluetooth get big billing at Comdex West
04/02/2000-Windows 2000 and the first public Canadian demonstration of Bluetooth technology were the big news of the Vancouver Comdex show.
Microsoft Corp.’s vice-president for Canada and central U.S. Frank Clegg said he expected enterprise adoption of the new Windows offering to be slower than in the consumer market. The customary trial period enterprises go through with new technology would slow the roll-outs, he thought.
A file transfer between two laptops without the use of any wires had the audience “”blown away”” by Bluetooth capabilities. Bruce Stout, an owner of a Vancouver-based computer consultancy firm Consultus Services, said the technology was very impressive and exciting because it was not proprietary.
Over the last few years Comdex and technology trade shows in general have had a tough time, an indication