J.D. Edwards Offers Supply-Chain Bundling

Enterprise software provider J.D. Edwards announced plans yesterday to bundle its OneWorld suite of enterprise resource planning software with supply-chain planning software from SynQuest and E-commerce software, hardware, and services from IBM. The three companies say they will provide up-front analysis of an ERP project's costs and scope, promising to speed ROI and shave time and expense off implementations, which the industry analyst firm the Meta Group estimates take an average of 26 months.

The bundled software, hardware, and services package--labeled the Supply Chain Advantage--is initially targeted at a vertical market known as industrial fabrication and assembly companies, which JD Edwards, IBM, and Synquest believe has gone untapped. "We found that IFA is an under- served market, but there's no doubt we'll eventually expand the solution into other vertical markets, such as automotive and consumer packaged goods," says Bill Goodison, J.D. Edwards VP of the industrials vertical solutions group.

Analysts say such bundling will limit the number of vendors an IT organization has to deal with in an application implementation. "Anytime you can reduce the number of constituents in an implementation, it reduces the risk," says Barry Wilderman, a Meta Group analyst. Supply Chain Advantage will be generally available July 13, and while pricing will vary according to project scope, an early pilot implementation totaled $3 million, including software, hardware, and services.