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But that reality never came to pass. Between 2002 and 2004 Lawson had some code difficulty with its Lawson 8 platform—Lawson 9 was released in March—and its stock price faltered. Then, last June, Harry Debes took the reins as president and CEO at the same time the St. Paul, Minn., company announced its intended acquisition of Intentia—a deal that has been slowed by regulatory conditions, but is expected to finally close April 24.
Debes is slowly, quietly working to turn the company around. Lawson just released its first SOA (service-oriented architecture) application, built on Landmark, the companys next-generation development platform. The Intentia acquisition will bring application functionality in manufacturing and a global reach.
Debes sat down with Senior Writer Renee Boucher Ferguson on April 10 at the companys annual CUE conference in Orlando, Fla., to talk about where Lawson has been and where its headed.
During the whole Oracle and PeopleSoft battle, Lawson seemed poised to fill the gap left in the midmarket, but somewhere along the way the company faltered. What happened?
A lot of people thought Lawson might become next the victim of Oracle, so a lot of people who might have selected us thought, What is that going to mean to me? Oracle salespeople used that to their advantage. Even today, they send letters to our prospects, saying, Were going to buy them and put them out of business. Someone always sends us the letters.
At the same time, the Oracle bid for PeopleSoft was so low that it was ridiculous. We made the claim at the time—I was there—that if this was strictly done with our transaction [it would affect] our ability to conduct business.
And we had evidence. During the discovery [phase] of the trial there was access to all those internal e-mails between senior management at Oracle. One actually said, Even if we dont go through with this [acquisition of PeopleSoft], launching the bid against them will screw them up badly.
I suspect Lawson became victimized to some degree. Then quarters, and a year goes by, and it looks like Oracle is not going to acquire Lawson, they have their hands full with projects, and so, we re-established [our]selves. Customers can only put things off so long.
Has the acquisition of PeopleSoft impacted your business positively? How many converts have you had replacing PeopleSoft with Lawson?
Last quarter, there were two that we mentioned. Every quarter, there are several deals we take away. Wal-Mart was one.
Wal-Mart is definitely not midmarket. Has your focus changed?
No. Every once in a while, heres what happens … a large company like Wal-Mart identifies a functional area where our software fits. Our sales rep doesnt even call on them.
In this case, Wal-Mart called us. [A Wal-Mart executive] hid their name badge and spent an hour in our [conference] booth. But Ive worked with them in the past, so I said we will not change our road map, pricing deals, license deals. We wont go there. If they like what we have out of the box, fine. If not, well take ourselves out. But we achieved the benchmark they set for performance. Now there is an opportunity to do so much more.
Whats different about your relationship with IBM now, versus two years ago when Lawson had a relationship with IBM?
In past, the technology layer from Lawson was a proprietary layer. We had cobbled together a number of components and tools for the technology layer upon which our applications were built. As time went on we found that layer of products [was not supportable]. We couldnt stay competitive with it. Others, IBM, SAP, Oracle, BEA … were spending hundreds of millions in developing robustness and scalability—all things we needed to do but we simply couldnt keep up with. For our smallest customers, that was ok. But for our largest customers, that was not good enough.
We needed a better portal, stronger middleware, so customers went out and acquired, so we had a mixed bag. We had a nightmare in trying to figure out a whole new bundle, so we had to take a very hands-off approach [to support]. But the customers were thinking, I have a system here, I need someone to surround me with love and affection.
But whatever it is youve got—BEA, TomCat, we didnt know, so we figured, lets find some middleware that we believe is world-class, so we dont ever have to apologize for it, and that gives customers as many choices as they can possibly make. We didnt want to limit on the database or the hardware platform, theres big investments there … and we wanted a gradual path.
We entered into a relationship with IBM, to create stack of middleware that could and would be bundled with our product. We announced it at the last CUE—not that we hadnt worked with IBM before—but I blew it up because the terms werent good. It was a crappy deal for us, financially. IBM came back to us and said, Youre important to us, so we worked it out, reaffirming our affections for each other, and now were off to the races.
Next Page: Landmark could be huge.
Landmark Could Be Huge
Is Landmark a game-changer for you?
It could be a huge game-changer. Weve probably been under-marketing this the past year. The reason is, if we came out and said a year ago … weve got this, and then said nothing about it for nine months—not that it isnt good and cool and a huge investment; weve got 40 of our most brilliant guys working on this—but if we went out a year ago and told the world we had this enormous [capability], no ones going to believe us. Whos going to believe these guys in St. Paul outfoxed Microsoft, SAP and all those guys? Do you understand why some guys might be skeptical?
I told the development guys, To help us all, make something happen. Deliver something real. Get customers on stage to say I love it, its great, I want all my products like this in the future. If you can do that, it works for me. Before we take out full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, I want to see more applications.
Were very encouraged. Were past the point of does this really work, but [asking] how quickly can you scale this up. There are a number of applications in the pipeline that will come out over next quarter. Once that happens, and there is a high level of acceptance, then we will take out that ad in the Wall Street Journal.
How many customers do you have using Strategic Sourcing [the first application built using Landmark]?
Two. Buncombe County, [N.C.,] and the city of Greensburgh.
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How important is it that Intentia buy into Landmark, given that your application stacks will remain separate?
Theyve already started. Theyre already figuring out which new application modules to develop in Landmark. Weve had the benefit of time to do some things we wouldnt have if the merger closed earlier.
[Intentias applications are written in Java.] Will it be difficult for Intentia to move to a new development model?
Landmark creates pure J2EE [Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition] Java code. It isnt a language you compile and run, it creates code, so its completely compatible.
How many customers do you have on Lawson 9?
Two are live. There are six on technology—it seems like ones going live every day now. There are lots more in the queue.
What happened to Lawsons thousand-day plan that promised to change the way software companies behave?
Its still going on. Thats our manifesto. There are six or seven things that we have done, and continue to do. Its all about following up on our promise to customers.
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