Geac Computer Corp, which rather impressed analysts with its figures last week, has now completed its first exhaustive sift through just what it did buy when it acquired Dun & Bradstreet Software Corp last October, and has been talking about some of the decisions it has reached. The Markham, Ontario company, successively the manufacturer of a proprietary 16-bit minicomputer and a dedicated supplier of library automation systems until an acquisition spending spree took it into a whole string of other vertical markets, has been talking to PC Week and says that it will shed some applications from the Dun & Bradstreet portfolio. What had been Dun & Bradstreet Software in Atlanta has been split into two divisions – Geac HosTechnologies for mainframe software, and Geac SmartStream for client server packaged applications. The company will continue to develop most SmartStream applications, including financials, personnel and Web front ends, but Geac will abandon further development of the manufacturing applications and drastically alter the distribution applications. There are some 20 companies using SmartStream manufacturing applications and they will have to look elsewhere for upgrades, while the more than 60 distribution users will need to be aware of what is going on as the company alters the applications to tailor them for companies such as computer resellers. Geac said that dumping the manufacturing applications is an acknowledgment that companies such as SAP AG and Oracle Corp have come to dominate the high end of the manufacturing software market, leaving little on the table for Geac – which anyway has a competing product at its Geac Manufacturing & Distribution Systems in Australia, which is now in beta test.
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