Lawson and Intentia are merging.
Lots of synergies - Lawson is stronger in services oriented verticals; Intentia of Sweden - in manufacturing niches like beverages, apparel. Lawson was never that strong outside the US.
Every major market - ERP is certainly one - can support 3 to 5 vendors and the combination makes a much stronger number 3 in the market. They are bringing in Harry Debes as CEO (Jay Coughlin is leaving) , with significant field ops experience at J.D. Edwards, Geac and other software companies. The Intentia CEO , Bertrand Sciard, becomes COO of the combination. So good solid operational experience needed to improve profitability which has been missing from both companies.
They will also need a lot more marketing to keep up with the noise SAP and Oracle are making in the market. The two co-chairmen - Richard Lawson and Romesh Wadhwani - can certainly help there. Richard has continued to focus on Lawson but has been in background the last few years; Romesh has so many different other interests with his fund, Symphony Technology Group - so that may be too much to expect.
But together they could now be another viable option for mid-sized Peoplesoft and J.D. Edwards customers...their choices as I had indicated in my blog a month ago, just keep expanding
