Dutch ERP software vendor Baan Co NV has struck a deal with Groupe Bull to use the French services house to rent out its applications to customers. The deal gives Bull preferred status to lease Baan applications in France with rights to sell globally.
Baan will announce further outsourcing application rental deals with services providers across the US and Canada over the next few weeks, said Jim Worley, Baan’s general manager, global outsourcing. The Bull deal differs from other outsourcing application rental contracts between ERP software vendor SAP AG and services partners Electronic Data Systems Corp (CI No 3,595) and British Telecom Plc (CI No 3,622), in that it offers software for a flat fee instead of a per-application price.
Bull will host Baan ERP, and e-business applications like customer relationship management and sales force automation, on NT and Unix servers charging customers $514 per user, per month. Pierre Pignol, president of Bull world-wide outsourcing group, said the partners had spurned customized pricing to offer more simplicity for customers.
He admitted Bull risked losing money on some accounts with the pricing model but said the fixed fee closely matched the overheads of providing services under contracts it has simulated with prospective customers. Pignol said Bull would focus on attracting middle range customers for whom simple pricing would be a selling point.
Baan’s Worley said short-term demand for rented applications would come from organizations at full stretch with Y2K seeking convenient access to new software. Bull’s Pignol said the deal positioned the company to gain share in the expected future market in supplying ERP applications over the internet.
