Job cuts overshadow JD Edwards user event

Software vendor JD Edwards is expected to face questions from users and analysts at its annual user conference in Denver this week about last month's reorganisation that led to 800 job cuts worldwide.

The company is also expected to make a number of product announcements which it claims will demonstrate deliverable applications for the collaborative supply chain market.

However, chief executive Ed McVaney - appointed following Doug Massingill's sudden departure in April - will face tough questioning from analysts about the restructure. The move, which saw 88 job losses in Europe, the Middle East and Africa region, followed a series of weak quarterly financial results.

Among the top attractions at the conference will be the first showing of a supply chain production scheduler for discrete environments, created by the Numetrix development team. The technology automatically generates the scheduling rules, and claims to be much simpler to install and use than rival products.

Michael Schmitt, senior vice president of ebusiness at JD Edwards, said: "We will have a demonstration that shows Ariba CommerceCenter (Tradex) take an order; blow it into OneWorld (enterprise resource planning); then into Active supply Chain; collaborate with alerts; respond to a problem; update sales via Siebel; do analysis with MicroStrategy; and buy some promotion materials via Ariba eprocurement. All deliverable today."

Live demonstrations are always fraught with danger, as SAP co-chairman Hasso Plattner found out last month in Berlin when parts of the company's multi-channel collaborative selling demonstration failed to work properly. So if Schmitt's team successfully pulls this off, it will be an impressive performance in front of an audience that will be dominated by manufacturing industry customers.

JD Edwards will also talk about its plans to introduce a message broker and XML-based internet transport integrated with its supply chain planning and execution business processes. This functionality is widely recognised as critical for ensuring that collaborative supply chains can deliver on the promise of linking many different systems.

vnunet.com will be reporting from the conference.