Baan Holding BV, the Dutch supplier of enterprise-wide resource planning software for multi-national, multi-location corporations in the manufacturing, distribution and construction industries, has chalked up another marketing partnership giving it a total of three in the last two months. Its first agreement was with Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG (CI No 2,594). The agreement with Baan, said Siemens Nixdorf marketing manager Dirk Miller, in no way conflicts with the partnership Siemens Nixdorf also has with Baan’s fiercest competitor SAP AG. Siemens Nixdorf, Miller added, had contact with Baan for many years before the March agreement, which Miller says is updating and refreshing much of what has already existed. This statement contradicts recent reports in the German trade press that had claimed that Siemens Nixdorf had abandoned SAP for Baan. Miller said h is company will continue to support SAP’s R/3 and make it a focus, but Siemens Nixdorf will also give the customer what he wants – and, for many, that is Baan. Baan has also signed a similar agreement with Digital Equipment Corp, another vendor that also supports the SAP software. The agreement focuses primarily on achieving portability between DEC’s Alpha hardware and Baan’s Triton package. The newest and most interesting Baan partner is Hitachi Ltd, itself a convinced SAP customer. Hitachi has agreed to distribute Triton throughout its businesses in South East Asia. In total, Hitachi is formally committed to some 35 overseas accounts by 1998. Baan says the first discussions with Hitachi took place in Tokyo in 1994. According to Henk Bruinekreeft, Baan’s marketing manager for Asia, Hitachi has already reported its first commercial orders for Baan. Customers are Hitachi facilities in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. There the software package runs on the Hitachi family of Series 3050 and 3500 Unix syste ms. Founded in 1978 in Ede, the Netherlands, Baan operates from dual corporate headquarters in Ede and Menlo Park, California. To date, the company says it has some 1,000 employees and an installed base of more than 1,800 companies in more than 45 countries worldwide. It reported 1994 sales of $115m and claims to be growing at an annual rate of 70%. Its customers include Boeing Co, Northern Telecom Ltd, ABB Technology Inc, Noranda Inc, Philips Electronics NV and Sensormatic Electronics Corp.
