IBM and Lawson team to deliver open and integrated business solutions to customers.

IBM and Lawson Software has announced that Lawson will optimize and standardize its comprehensive business applications portfolio on IBM's open standards-based software and hardware, and the companies will jointly market pre-integrated solutions to customers. As part of the expanded strategic alliance, the two companies will also develop and market new vertical offerings to help customers address their business challenges across industries including healthcare, retail, government, education, financial services and other service sector markets.

Lawson also has selected IBM WebSphere as the foundation for its new business applications platform, codenamed "Project Landmark," to help its clients move to a J2EE compliant service-oriented architecture (SOA), and to provide them with an open standards-based framework for automating business processes with their customers, partners and suppliers. Landmark is being designed to help clients mitigate application complexity by reducing the source coding required, with the goal of providing virtually error-free, consistent Java code. Landmark-developed applications and Web services will share the same data repository as clients' existing Lawson applications enabling clients to perform only an upgrade, not a migration or new implementation, to take advantage of them.

"Lawson's expanded alliance with IBM will only make it easier for us to work with the leading business applications provider for healthcare and the leading open standards-based software and hardware provider," said J.P. Kichak, VP & CIO of University of North Carolina Health Care. "Their combined offer will help reduce IT complexity for us while giving us the flexibility we need to rapidly respond to changing needs."

IDC expects the ERP applications market to reach $36 billion by the end of 2008. Today's announcement represents a significant commitment to providing mid-market clients with open, standards-based business solutions that will help enable them to leverage their existing IT assets, lower costs, and provide them flexibility regarding their choice of operating environments. The expanded relationship with Lawson will enable new and existing customers to achieve increased levels of operational efficiency and insight into their business process through an open standards based infrastructure.

"Midmarket companies are seeking open and integrated solutions that won't lock them into a proprietary environment and help accelerate return on investment," said Steve Mills, Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Software Group. "The joint IBM and Lawson solutions are easy to implement and will enable customers to solve their industry and business challenges on demand."

During the first half of 2006, Lawson intends to ship releases of its business application suites--including Lawson Financials, Supply Chain Management, Human Resources, Enterprise Performance Management and Procurement--with embedded core components of IBM WebSphere, DB2, Rational and Tivoli. Standardizing Lawson's applications on IBM's open middleware will help enable clients to quickly and easily implement business solutions at a lower cost of ownership.

IBM and Lawson will also continue to optimize solution performance on IBM eServer and IBM TotalStorage technologies including: xSeries, pSeries, iSeries, zSeries, TotalStorage, and Linux on OpenPower. The result for customers will be enterprise-class security, performance and reliability at an affordable price

Both companies will jointly market the integrated offerings to customers. As a Lawson services partner, IBM will provide support and vertical industry expertise through IBM Global Services and Business Consulting Services (BCS). IBM and Lawson will also dedicate more consultants in Lawson's IBM Competency Center to support testing and development.

"This strategic alliance extends Lawson's reputation for industry-specific, outcome-driven business solutions and further positions Lawson to lead in the mid-market," said Lawson Chief Product Officer Dean Hager. "The combination of IBM's industry-leading technology solutions and Lawson's applications and vertical market expertise will deliver clients the best value in systems for running their business."

IBM and Lawson will jointly develop and market new vertical industry 'solution packs' to organizations in the healthcare, retail, government, education, financial services and other service sector markets. These industry solution packs will provide clients with pre-integrated offerings that are being designed to be easy to install and maintain, and address industry-specific pain points.