Consolidation will continue apace in the ERP market, with SSA GT - now renamed SSA Global - maintaining that it has already agreed its next major acquisition.

Speaking to vnunet.com at SSA's third annual user conference in Orlando Florida, president, chairman and chief executive Mike Greenough said the deal had been finalised but would not be formally announced until March next year.

"The deal is out there and it's been accepted. We could have announced it this Friday but we opted to slow it down in order to better integrate the Baan acquisition first," he said.

SSA's major shareholders, Cerberus Capital Management and General Atlantic Partners, bought Baan for SSA GT for $135m in July.

According to Greenough, its next acquisition will be of a privately held ERP vendor and will extend SSA's user base in a new vertical market.

Unlike its string of previous deals, SSA will not ask shareholders to fund the deal. "We will be raising $350m in long term debt in November to fund the major acquisition," explained Greenough.

While SSA is prepared to hold off, Greenough is confident that a deal will take place even if it is with another company. "There are five or six ERP companies out there we could go after," he said.

Greenough is on record as expressing an interest in both i2 and Manugistics, although the latter services the same manfacturing sector as much of SSA's current business.

But i2, likely to be near the top of SSA GT's shopping list, is cagey about the prospect of becoming the latest course in the firm's acquisition feast.

"These guys clearly have a strategy of growing by acquisition but I don't know whether supply chain software fits into their plans," said Jim Contardi, president EMEA of i2.

"People buy i2 because they have heterogeneous environments. Being part of a larger ERP vendor takes away some of the value of that."

Alongside the ERP deal, Greenough maintained that there will be several far smaller deals that the company will use to fill out its technology offerings.

"There are 15 to 20 potential targets on the technology acquisition side," he said.

The company's acquisitions are part of a strategy to build a suite of products and applications that can hang off its core ERP offerings.

Consolidation in the ERP market is just part of bringing the market in line with more developed industries, according to Greenough.

"Macro economic principles are finally being applied to the software market. We are at the vanguard but it has only just begun," he concluded.