Analyzing MAPICS’ Further Steps After Frontstep
P.J. Jakovljevic - October 10, 2003

Event Summary

For the last several months, MAPICS, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAPX), possibly the largest global provider of extended enterprise applications for solving the challenges of discrete manufacturers following the acquisition of its former competitor Frontstep (see MAPICS To Leap Forward In A Frontstep Way), has shown both the signs of significant changes but also a persistence of a number of its historically recognizable invariant tenets of operation. The former steadfast IBM iSeries (formerly IBM AS/400)-based ERP supplier to mid-market manufacturing companies, MAPICS, has since indeed become quite a larger vendor and with a wider choice of products, having recently acquired a Microsoft .NET-based competitor. However, as the customers from both camps have been uncertain of their provider’s strategy, given that bigger size brings about the need to rationalize multiple products in the same marketplace, after a few months period of buried heads and brainstorming sessions, MAPICS has lately been engaged in explaining its rationale, as to set many customers’ minds at ease...