Lawson Software-IPO and Several Acquisitions After Part Four: Strengths Continued

P.J. Jakovljevic - November 10, 2003
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Lawson Software-IPO and Several Acquisitions After Part Four: Strengths Continued
P.J. Jakovljevic & Lou Talarico - November 10, 2003

Strengths Continued

Until very recently, Lawson Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: LWSN) has cruised as a leader in the mid-to-high end market for financial management, human resources (HR), professional services automation (PSA), e-procurement, and retail distribution applications by continually betting on the following few creeds of success:

1. Adequately broad footprint

2. Architectural astuteness

3. Industry-tailored solutions

4. Hosting approach


2) Architectural Astuteness

As mentioned earlier, Lawson has long embraced a layered, flexible, open, Web-based, and XML-accessible product architecture, with the idea of support for ever changing technology standards. A good example was its early delivery of visionary, Web-addressable (with server-based application logic and a data structure that could be referenced and executed via a URL) and componentized products (using Active Object Repository) that exhibit an open architecture and a support for a wide range of platforms (using Business Component Integrator (BCI)), well in advance of much larger and more noisy competitors.

Lawson has long been promoting its Self-Evident Applications (SEA) initiative (since 1996), with the idea to simplify the learning curve required by users, featuring Lawson Portal (a default role-based Web user interface) and navigational tools. The underpinning of Lawson's technologies have long been SEA, which is the concept of delivering application functionality to light-client, browser-based desktops. While conventional client/server applications are form- or transaction-driven, the Self-Evident (recently renamed into Self-Service) Applications are information based, which means that users can view them on dynamic and personalized Web pages, with minimal training requirements. Another product component that was released at the end of 1990s, LAWSON INSIGHT II Open Component Solutions, allowed users to access, view, and interact with enterprise information using one of the following technologies: Java, Microsoft ActiveX, Lotus Domino, or Javascript/HTML.

The Lawson product architecture has since further evolved and is currently composed of the following:

The Web Services component includes Lawson Portal and Internet Object Services (IOS), which are key components for deploying Lawson applications via the Internet. The component was devised to provide physical and logical separation as well as multi-level integration. Lawson Portal provides a single point of navigation through which users can access information from disparate sources, including Lawson core business applications, third party applications, Internet sites, and other miscellaneous data sources. Furthermore, businesses can customize the preconfigured user interfaces by using extensions to tailor solutions to meet their specific requirements. Lawson Portal enables a wide distribution of information to users based on their roles in an organization, while controlling access to data and can be configured by other enterprise portal products. Internet Object Services provides the connection between Lawson and the Internet, and manages the communication between Lawson's browser-based interfaces and Lawson applications and databases. Internet Object Services delivers user requests to Lawson applications and responds with results to users.





source
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/lawson-software-ipo-and-several-acquisitions-after-part-four-strengths-continued-17106/