SAP Says Infor's Customers and Partners Are Migrating to SAP

Published: February 17, 2009

by Alex Woodie

Business software giant SAP is pilfering the customer and partner ranks of Infor, picking off the best and brightest prospects as a result of its superior products and partner structure. Or at least that's what the company claimed last week in a press release.

In its announcement, SAP America, a subsidiary of SAP, claims that "an increasing number of growing businesses and reseller partners are switching from Infor products to SAP solutions for small businesses and midsize companies." The ERP behemoth says the customers are moving to SAP to "avoid being tied to a single vendor," due to SAP's "superior partner programs," and because of its "open technology platform."

SAP cited three former Infor customers and four former partners that have switched to SAP. The three customers were American Metal Treating Company of Cleveland, Ohio; Bamboo Pipeline of Camarillo, California; and Strategix of Melbourne, Florida. The four partners were Navigator Business One Solutions of Pleasant Grove, Utah; AchieveIT Solutions of Commack, New York; Effective Computer Solutions (ECS) of Jacksonville, Florida; and Long Business Systems of Cleveland, Ohio.

SAP declined to provide more detail about which products Infor customers are leaving in favor of the SAP solutions.

Infor sounded more flattered than fearful about the supposed pillaging. "In my humble opinion, SAP's press release is more about fear than momentum," Infor's senior VP of marketing, Rick Parker, says in his blog at blogs.infor.com/. "Sorry SAP, we didn't mean to scare you."

In his blog, Parker writes that the customers and partners SAP is touting have been off the Infor bandwagon for "some time." Plus, he adds, one of the partners was never associated with Infor. "It is pretty unusual for a market behemoth to publicly jab a competitor unless they actually view them as the market leader. I can only surmise that SAP is taking it on the chin in the field and they wrote a release to give them a bandage for the bleeding," Parker writes.

While SAP and Infor both compete for some of the same ERP customers, the companies have not waged PR battles, at least not publicly. SAP usually saves its ammo for its biggest competitor, Oracle, while Infor, which has 70,000 customers around the world and is the fourth or fifth largest ERP provider, has been working on streamlining its business structure of late.

Infor's latest move is the creation of a dedicated System i organization to develop, support, and sell its various ERP solutions that run on the System i platform. It has also been tweaking its reseller channel lately.

RELATED STORIES

Infor Carves Out a Dedicated System i Division

Infor Shows Flexibility as Reseller Channel Evolves

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