A briefly research of IBM’s ERP systems

Outline

Introduction…………………….…………………… 02

IBM Products……………………………………….. 03

Competitive Advantage……………………………. 08

Conclusion………………………….……………..... 09

Final Reference……………………..……………….10

Introduction

In the era of globalization, business organizations are facing increasing numbers of challenges from peer companies all around the world. They keep changing their marketing strategies, improving products, and developing new management systems to gain more competitiveness. This lead to the rapid development of ERP industry, by 2002, around 39% of big as well as 60% of smaller organizations implemented ERP systems, and core ERP software were implemented in 70% of Fortune 1000 companies in areas which includes manufacturing, financing, HR, and so on (Yen et al, 2002, P.338). This paper will focus on one of the most famous and historical IT Company’s ERP business, which is the IBM.

As one of the oldest IT service company, more than 100 years history gave IBM very comprehensive and deep understanding of its customers’ needs, wants, and demands. MRP, the early prototype of the ERP system was developed by many companies in partnership with IBM in late 1960s (Robert Jacobs, 2007). IBM’s business scope covers the IT industry. From computer, mobile device, operating system, and even artificial intelligence developments, this make the company holds a massive technological background. The good reputation bring IBM a great numbers of loyal customer groups from all over the world, lead to a strong and unshakable industry position (Gongla & Rizzuto, 2001).

This paper will focus on two significant ERP products of IBM, which are from two different product lines. Use the analyze outcomes to identify many characteristics of its products, combine them with existing theories. And eventually, identify some competitive strengths of the company.

IBM Products

This part will focus on two main ERP systems from two most principal aspects, which are collaboration ERP systems and its self-developed ERP systems. Through this analyze to find common peculiarities of IBM.

IBM- PureSystems and OpenPro ERP solutions

OpenPro ERP is a web-based ERP system, it is a software package build on the IBM PureData system, which integrates Accounting and Financial management, Supply Chain management, customer relationship, electronic Business management, and organization database (Ulubil, 2012). Four main features of this system will be introduce and analyzed in this section.

1. IBM PureSystems

Before the analysis of this system, IBM’s PureSystems need to be introduced, as this is one of the main ICT platform in the market, and the base or support system of many third-party software, like Kindee, Infor, and TCL’s ERP system (Ulubil, 2012). This system is designed to gain competitive advantages with its ICT peer companies like Oracle and SAP, and meet the IT market demands.

PureSystems is a category of IT solution systems which includes the integration between servers, storage, and networking. Mainly contains three types of offerings can be mentioned are PureFlex, PureApplication, and PureData systems. The PureData systems is a business intelligence tool from IBM used to interpret and analyse high volume of data at high speed. It provides a large variety of predefined functions that can be used for analytics by clients (IBM, 2012). This system mainly focus on the transaction, operation, and analysis through specialized Hardware and software components.

2. Open Source
Then it comes to the OpenPro, the most important feature can be mentioned here is that OpenPro is an open source ERP system, which means that the source code is opened to the public. According to a research of Herzog in 2006, the open source ERP overcame many disadvantages of the general ERP systems. For instance, without royalty fees, open source ERP system will only charge the customer service fee and reduced more than 80% cost for the supplier, can be