JD Edwards ditches Siebel for something smaller

NEWS Software integrator JD Edwards has ditched its partnership with Siebel Systems on the grounds of incompatibility, accepting an offer from CRM software manufacturer YOUcentric instead. Under the deal JD Edwards will acquire 100 per cent of privately-owned YOUcentric, for stock and cash worth $86m. Existing Siebel implementations will continue, and receive support for the remainder of their lifecycles, but the company will stop taking on new Siebel business "imminently", according to marketing director Trevor Salomon. "The sweet spot for JD Edwards has always been mid-sized companies, and those companies just aren't adopting Siebel. The perception is that Siebel is too large a product, and YOUcentric is a better fit for those implementations," he said. Salomon denied that the decision is based on technological factors, though he conceded that YOUcentric's java-based thin client architecture is better suited with JD Edward's existing OneWorld ERP solution than the Siebel's client server technology. He also added: "If you accept that collaborative commerce is going to happen, what ever form it happens in, then the thin-client model is definitely the way to go." Solomon said it will be easy to integrate YOUcentric into JD Edwards OneWorld ERP and many of the staff will remain at the merged company. This differs from many CRM acquisitions, where either the software is kept and most of the staff are removed, or the software is junked and rebuilt to fit in better with the parent's own software architecture.