Microsoft Hucks J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne

Published: October 25, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Avnet Technology Solutions and Microsoft are teaming up to push a midmarket ERP product that has deep roots within the IBM ecosystem: the J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne suite currently owned by Oracle.

EnterpriseOne has supported multiple stacks since its inception, and is available today on i5/OS, Windows, and Unix operating systems and DB2, Oracle, and SQL Server databases. Avnet and Microsoft are planning to push the Windows-SQL Server 2000 or 2005 option by providing lots of training to resellers and their customers.

The current deal, which is an expansion of the original partnership Microsoft and Avnet signed five years ago, also includes co-marketing, sales, financing, and services support from the two industry giants. Avnet and its channel will also take the opportunity to push Office 2003 and Exchange Server 2003 products into EnterpriseOne shops. Customers will be able to pick their own brand of hardware to run the Windows-based ERP software.

EnterpriseOne, in case you don't know, is the next-generation client-server ERP system developed by J.D. Edwards in the mid to late 1990s as a way to get a product that ran on Unix and Windows NT. J.D. Edwards initially planned for users of its older RPG-based World ERP system, which runs exclusively on IBM's i5/OS and System i (formerly iSeries and AS/400), to migrate to the new C++-based OneWorld suite (as EnterpriseOne was then known). However, that mass migration away from World (and the AS/400, by connection) never fully materialized, and today thousands of companies still rely on World, which Oracle continues to develop following its acquisition of PeopleSoft.

Considering the deep connection that the J.D. Edwards company and product line has historically had with IBM, its distributors and resellers, and its WebSphere and DB2 middleware, it's a bit of a surprise to hear Microsoft and Avnet--which distributes gear from IBM as well as all the other big system vendors--teaming up to push EnterpriseOne. But stranger things have happened. Indeed, Oracle doing anything to help IBM would be a far stranger occurrence.