Hewlett-Packard and Prestige partner with JD Edwards to offer totally managed, flexible ERP II services in manufacturing

For manufacturers that want full scale enterprise systems (ERP) without the pain of the IT and infrastructure issues, JD Edwards has announced a partnership deal with Hewlett-Packard and Prestige Systems that delivers end-to-end services. Dubbed idealWorld, it centres on delivery of JDE’s OneWorld Xe system under a flexible, three to 10 year managed services contract that covers consulting, implementation and all staff and support, with full financing, all in one. At a stroke, manufacturers can delete the design, implementation, staffing and operating headaches of running their systems in house. And the partners say systems can either be run at users’ own data centres or remotely from any of HP’s global operations service centres. It’s an interesting offering. HP designs and provides the technology (infrastructure, system development and so forth), with staffing, managed services, support and finance (through HP-IB), while Prestige (already a OneWorld Xe VAR) handles the application development side, alongside JDE consultants. And the trio insist that with their combined experience and methodologies, implementation is rapid – and so thus is return on investment. JDE marketing director Trevor Salomon describes it as a “very compelling deal.” Director of IT outsourcing at HP David McLachlan says: “Customers want end-to-end managed system design, implementation, management and support. This way they can focus on their core competence and forget issues like skills shortages.” John Dawson, Prestige managing director, adds “It is very unlikely that customers will put in the level of security and infrastructure management that this service includes into their own company. It’s a whole new offering … that has never before been offered from one central resource.” This is not an ASP (application service provider) deal – although it can be run as such, and Salomon makes the point that JD Edwards already has 227 ASP customers around the world, albeit not in the UK. HP also has 160 ‘ASP’ users and is now the leading ERP infrastructure outsourcer. Salomon advises – rightly – that the time may well now be right for totally managed services of this ilk. Citing analyst IDC’s prediction that ASP alone will be worth $5 billion in Europe alone, he says: “ASP hasn’t taken off to date because so many of the companies offering ASP didn’t have any technical background; they didn’t give any confidence.” This is quite different. And with the new partnership, the entire system can be rented to take the initial costs out of the equation, with per seat per month fees and so forth, or any combination – although the partners are reluctant to give example figures. Either way, for manufacturers that know they need desperately to improve their systems to support both internal efficiency initiatives and external supply chain developments, this is going to be attractive. Stand by for a flood of these very specific offerings.