Lawson Software has announced a new version of its ERP applications that includes SOA (service-oriented architecture) capabilities delivered through a middleware partnership with IBM.

Lawson announced last May that it would work with IBM to develop SOA interfaces for its business applications. Wednesday’s announcement of Lawson Release 9 represents the culmination of that year-long effort, Lawson said.

The company competes with ERP vendors SAP and Oracle, both of which have also been adding SOA capabilities to their products. As well as bringing SOA capabilities to Lawson’s software, the deal benefits IBM by giving it a major applications vendor committed to its service-oriented architecture, analysts have said.

SOA is a design principle for building business applications. It allows software components to be reused as services, which proponents say reduces development work and helps make businesses more agile.

Lawson Release 9 includes improved business applications, business intelligence capabilities and business process management tools optimized for IBM’s WebSphere, DB2 Universal Database and Tivoli software, the St. Paul, Minn., vendor said.

The product comes with IBM’s WebSphere Application Server ND 6.0, Tivoli Directory Server 6.0 and DB2 Enterprise Edition 8.2, Lawson said.

The release contains enhancements to the human capital management, supply chain management and enterprise management applications. Lawson also added new functionality to help publicly traded companies comply more efficiently with Sarbanes-Oxley Act Sections 404 and 409.

For business intelligence, the company added a secure report "bursting" capability that aims to reduce the administrative time spent creating, dividing and distributing multiple copies of a report to staff. It also added automated workflow controls and proactive notifications to ensure more consistent and timely completion of business processes.

The new release offers upgraded process management tools for users to help manage, streamline and secure end-to-end processes, Lawson said.

Lawson said the upgrade combines several of its applications and tools under a single version number, which will help to simplify pricing, packaging and maintenance contracts for customers.

Pricing information was not announced, and Lawson was not immediately available for comment.

-John Blau, IDG News Service

For related content, read Technology Editor Chris Lindquist’s blog post, BEA SOA isn’t DOA.

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