SINGAPORE--Despite its assurances, Oracle will eventually force its customers to upgrade to its Project Fusion portfolio of business applications, says Lawson's CEO.

Noting Oracle's heavy investments to acquire J.D Edwards, PeopleSoft and Siebel, Debes said: "Nobody in their right mind builds a monstrous new thing and doesn't sell or push hard for it."

Technologies from the three acquired companies will be integrated into Oracle's next-generation Fusion applications, due in 2008.

Debes added: "And, when they force J.D Edwards, PeopleSoft and other acquired customers to upgrade, not everybody will want to, because when you hold a gun to the customers' heads and say you must upgrade now and this is the price to pay, some of them will resist it.

"We don't expect all of them to resist it, but what if 5 percent resist it? Even 5 percent can double the size of our business," he said, noting that Lawson will target those customers.

In the third quarter of fiscal 2007 ended Feb. 28, 2007, Lawson reported revenues of US$191.2 million, an increase of 118 percent from the same period last year. Lawson attributed the good showing to the consolidation of revenues of the former Intentia, which merged with Lawson last April.

Despite Debes' claims, Oracle has consistently maintained that it will provide lifetime support for its acquired customers, while providing a clear upgrade path for those who want to take advantage of Fusion applications.

Oracle has also said it will continue to invest in J.D. Edwards, Peoplesoft and Siebel applications, reversing an earlier decision to discontinue support for those companies' software after 2013.

Still, Debes insists that Lawson will have a different strategy from its competitor. "We're anti-Oracle, if they turn left, we turn right," he said. "We're not going to force customers to do some unnatural upgrade."

In March, Lawson broke the four-year hiatus for old Intentia customers with a product refresh. It launched Lawson M3 7.1--previously known as Movex under Intentia-- business applications, which focus on the manufacturing and trade industries.

Debes said that M3 7.1 is a significant release, since the applications will be separated from the middleware piece for the first time. "In the past, they were tightly-coupled, so that means if there was a need to upgrade your database, you also had to upgrade your applications.

"This can be very costly, especially if customers had made enhancements to the applications," he explained. "Now, customers can upgrade their middleware without touching the applications."

The middleware layer in M3 7.1 is provided by IBM, Debes said, adding that this was an extension of Lawson's OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partnership that was made with Big Blue two years ago.

Debes said with M3 7.1, Lawson has addressed the shortcomings of the M3 product line, which lacked middleware components based on an SOA (service-oriented architecture) framework.

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