New Boss for Baan
Baan promoted Susan Heystee to president of its Herndon, Va.-based Baan Americas operation. Heystee had been the firm’s vice president of field operations.
After joining Baan in 1997 as vice president and director of consulting for the firm’s Canadian subsidiary, Heystee was later promoted to vice president of consulting operations for the American unit, where she’s been a senior member of the management team for the last three years. Before joining Baan, Heystee worked at a Canadian software company, Ni-Tech.
A People Chain
PeopleSoft and Syncra Systems formed a marketing and product development alliance designed for consumer goods manufacturers looking to link PeopleSoft’s Supply Chain Planning software with Syncra’s CPFR collaborative commerce technology. The Internet-based system will connect businesses with suppliers, distributors, and retailers.
PeopleSoft and Syncra have promised to develop systems that comply with the CPFR (Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment) guidelines developed by the Voluntary Inter-industry Commerce Standards (VICS) Association. CPFR is a cross-industry initiative designed to to share processes and information in supplier-retailer partnerships.
Sneak Peek
Microsoft Corp. announced a corporate preview release of Office XP, the upgraded version of Microsoft Office. More than 500,000 business customers are expected to see the preview versions.
The preview release will include the latest versions of Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and the FrontPage Web site creation and management tool, and it will be available until Aug. 31.
Microsoft also said its BackOffice Server 2000 is available with a base price of $3,999. The system will be sold primarily to small and medium-size businesses, and it includes upgraded versions of Windows 2000, Exchange Server, and SQL Server. The server product also comes with The Internet Connection Wizard, which configures firewalls and manages network security.
I’ll Take Manhattan
Manhattan Associates, the publisher of SmartInfo, a data warehouse application for supply chain management and B2B E-commerce, joined Microsoft’s Data Warehousing Alliance (DWA). The DWA is a coalition of software vendors focused on helping customers build, use, and manage data warehouses that are integrated with Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Office 2000, and Windows 2000.
SmartInfo was designed to help partners in B2B exchanges identify trends and profile purchasing activity. The software also evaluates transportation costs and optimizes warehouse and inventory management.
Bits and Bytes
- Lawson Software chairman Richard Lawson will present a keynote speech at the ASP European Summit in Rome on March 8. He will discuss the company’s view of the changing role of applications in the IT market, and he will advise companies on managing shortages of skilled labor, meeting time-to-market requirements, countering global competition, and developing products.
- Oracle Corp. and Compaq Computer formed a multi-year technology and business partnership to deliver clustered computer configurations based upon Oracle9i Real Application Clusters and Compaq’s TruCluster Server. The companies did not provide a dollar value for the alliance.