Peoplesoft Inc has acquired quality management software house Salerno Manufacturing Systems Inc for an undisclosed sum. Privately held Salerno, based in Troy, Michigan, is a 17 year-old company which develops online automated data collection, statistical process control and quality data analysis software to the discrete and process industries. Its best known product line is SPM+open, which runs on Unix and Windows-based servers and supports the Oracle database. Users of the package include corporates such as Anheuser-Busch Inc, Boeing Inc, Caterpillar and 3Com Corp’s US Robotics. All Salerno staff, including sales, development and support teams, are being re-located to nearby Southfield, Michigan. PeopleSoft said it thought acquisition would be a quicker means of getting quality management software to market than building new software from scratch. The compatibility of the Salerno team and the strength of the solution led us to acquire the company outright, said Rob McKelligan, vice president of product strategy at PeopleSoft. Salerno recently completed a port of its Quality application to PeopleTools, the PeopleSoft development environment. It should become generally available with PeopleSoft 7.5 in the first half of next year, named PeopleSoft Quality.
