Cloud ERP: Lawson Software Partners with Amazon Web Services Cloud

The SaaS ERP competition got a little tougher yesterday: Lawson Software announced its ERP product would be available on the Amazon Web Services’ cloud.

For a while now, we have been following the state of the ERP market as it relates to cloud-computing and SaaS deployments—the underlying issue is that ERP models on the whole need a structural overhaul in order to move into the future, and embrace cloud-computing to some degree. Companies like NetSuite and Workday have received heavy praise, while ERP giants like SAP and Oracle have been frowned upon (even though they both offer cloud-based products).

That Lawson ERP—as one of the most popular ERP solutions after Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, and Infor—is moving to cloud-computing infrastructure is a big deal. Lawson will officially offer S3 Enterprise Management System, M3 Enterprise Management System, and the Talent Management application as cloud-based products starting in May. There will be a subscription pricing model, and eventually users will have the option of switching subscription licenses into perpetual ones.

One of the interesting things about Lawson moving to the cloud is that the company executives aren’t overselling the benefits users will receive from that deployment. For one thing, pricing is reportedly going to be about the same as on-premise licensing. The reason for this, according to Senior VP of Product Management Jeff Comport, is that Lawson doesn’t want to cut costs to get market share. This is in some ways a risky move, considering how most companies trumpet low prices as cloud-computing’s crowning benefit. But on the other hand, if the product is solid, Lawson will always have a large user base.

Another cloud-computing selling point Lawson is eschewing: SaaS ERP as a panacea. As a means of poaching customers from on-premise providers, most vendors boast of the quick deployment and turnaround time offered by cloud-based ERP. Lawson is acknowledging that their new deployment option will allow customers to set up application instances quickly, as well as rapidly execute some other tasks, they hold that “people-intensive processes” will still take work to fully customize.

It’s an interesting stance Lawson is taking with their SaaS ERP, and we’re curious to see what kind of excitement they muster with a marketing angle that is less about showboating and more about honesty.

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