The Indian information technology giant, CMC Ltd., and the Dutch Baan Company, have joined hands to provide 'Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)' solutions to Indian industries in efforts to improve their overall performances.

CMC and Baan signed an agreement under which the former will market the ERP package developed by Baan. The Managing Director of CMC said that the strengths of CMC as a leading system integrator conversant with government and public sector companies in India and the widely acclaimed ERP package of Baan would be leveraged to garner a significant market share in the growing business sector.

The two companies plan to target small and medium manufacturing companies with turnover of Rs. 100 crores (28 million) and above in four major sectors of automotive, electronics, industrial projects and batch process-based industries like food, chemicals etc. The collaboration with CMC is likely to quickly widen out the client base, as the interest in the product has been seen in every major manufacturing industry.

ADA Software and Services, a software development company, has tied-up with Swedish Logistics (Swelog) and Manessmann of Germany.

The tie-up with Swelog would be for development of application modules for application development of engineering process controls. The specifications for the product have been borrowed from the US-based Open Applications Group (OAG), which is a non-profit organization of ERP vendors worldwide.

ADA will market the jointly developed products in all the overseas market where Swelog does not have a presence. The Swedish firm is expected to invest $150 million in ADA in the next two years, and $750 million in India for development activities.

ADA plans tie-ups with Manessmann as its technical partner in India. In addition, the firm is also planning to set up a CORBA competence centre in Bangalore that would define the specification for CORBA applications which would be uniformly followed by all the companies.

Systems Union, supplier of the 'SunSystems' range of mid-market financial management and business software, will establish its local presence in India by the second quarter of 1997 for its line of financial and business management products. The company has recently signed a 'Qualified Implementor' agreement with Price Waterhouse Associates (PWA), India.

Under terms of the agreement, PWA India will provide business consulting, implementation and support for SunSystem range of financial and business management software in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar. It will also organize technical seminars in collaboration with Systems Union. whose products are currently being used by over 80 companies in India.

IBM Cimad, Belgium, and IBM's Indian partner, Tata Information System Ltd. (TISL), Bangalore, have entered into a joint development agreement with Mercantile Securities Ltd (MSL), the investment services arm of the MAC Group, Chennai, to develop and implement an 'Integrated Trade Management System (ITMS)', a front office brokerage system. The software is being developed to work in conjunction with existing back office system and the long-term objective is to offer a completely integrated systems for India and other countries.

ITMS will be based on a tool kit - CTS - developed by IBM's wholly-owned subsidiary, Cimad. The development cost is estimated at $ 1 million, excluding the cost of time and services of MSL. TISL and IBM will be marketing the product in India and worldwide respectively. An entry level system will be priced around Rs. 400,000 ($ 14,000).

Pune-based Tata Technologies India Ltd. (TTIL), a subsidiary of Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company Ltd. (Telco), has joined hands with SAP AG of Germany and Concentra Corporation of US for providing systems integration, engineering automation systems and turnkey custom-built software packages.

The President and CEO of SAP Asia-Pacific said that the coming together of his company with TTIL would provide organizations operating in India with an extra edge to stay competitive. The company's activities would be supported by the skills of Telco's IT professionals who have over 2, 500 work years of experience developing and implementing state-of-the-art systems for Telco's manufacturing plants, corporate and sales offices. Telco has one of India's biggest CAD centre with 200 CAD designers and sophisticated systems worth over $40 million.