With the acquisition, the combined company will be worth some US$1.6 billion in revenue, becoming the de-facto third largest business applications vendor after SAP AG and Oracle. Corp., according to Infor CEO and Chairman Jim Schaper. While he was unable to offer a detailed, long-term product roadmap, Schaper did emphasize in an interview that there are no plans to kill off any products or do forced migrations.

He acknowledged, however, that both sets of products served similar markets. Infor has been selling to manufacturing and distribution customers, and offers cross-industry software that enables asset management. SSA's various product lines, which themselves were cobbled together through a number of acquisitions, also serve manufacturers, said Schaper.

However, each company serves different niches in those markets, and there is "minimal overlap" among those niches. In addition, both companies have been working to develop a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for their products that will offer an inexpensive way to do applications integration, he said.

A couple of Infor customers were upbeat about the merger. "I have no end-of-product life concerns," said Bruce Knoll, director of IT at Meridian Automotive Systems Inc., in Dearborn, Mich. The car parts maker runs Mapics ERP applications from Infor. He said Infor isn't likely to buy up SSA just to sell it again for a profit or force the installed base to do migrations. Additionally, he is curious to see what SSA might bring to Infor's product portfolio.

Knoll said both companies service mid-sized manufacturers who rely on the AS/400 platform, making the deal announced Monday a "good match."