The Baan Corporation was created by Jan Baan in 1978 in Barneveld, Netherlands, to provide financial and administrative consulting services. With the development of his first software package, Jan Baan entered what was to become the ERP industry. The development of the company was heavily supported by local Dutch Reformed christian businesspeople. A few years later his brother, Paul, joined what was to become the largest software family firm in Dutch history. The Baan company focused on the creation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
In 1998 the Baan Corporation was exposed to be manipulating profits in a prelude to the big accounting scandals that marked the turn of the century. First Paul Baan left the company as a result of this, shortly after to be followed by brother Jan. The loss of confidence in the Baan Corporation was reflected in a rapidly declining share of the Baan program in the ERP market.
In June 2000, facing worsening financial difficulties, law suits and reporting seven consecutive quarterly losses and bleak prospects, Baan was sold to Invensys, a UK automation, controls and process solutions group to create its new Software and Services Division.
In June 2003 poor market performance of BaanERP (Baan V) and delays in introducing the new Baan version (code named Gemini) led Invensys to sell Baan to SSA Global Technologies for a cash consideration of US$ 135 million. The sale of Baan was consistent with Invensys’ stated objectives to divest non-core assets as part of its overall plan to improve capital strength and increase strategic focus.
Upon acquiring the Baan software SSA Global ceased to promote the Baan brand, instead referring to it as SSA Baan. In August 2004, after a delaying the release of Gemini to allow for improvements SSA Global released SSA ERP LN 6.1
From [URL=http://www.baanboard.com]www.baanboard.com[/URL]
