At the annual Lawson Customer and User Exchange 2006 (CUE) conference in Orlando, executives touted the performance and function that Lawson 9 would deliver. Most customers are now using Lawson 8.x versions of the software, and the company wants to see its installed base start moving toward version 9, which was announced last month.

Lawson Chief Product Officer Dean Hager emphasized improvements in how the applications are supported and a variety of new functions added throughout the suite -- which also has a business intelligence application. Lawson 9 is also the gateway to Landmark, which is built on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that enables the creation of composite applications.

'It's your path to the future,' Hager said in a keynote address earlier Tuesday.

Ultimately, customers will be able to easily create composite application workflows that can sit on top of both Lawson and third-party software, he said.

Migrating to Lawson 9 comes with a price, because customers must also standardize on the Lawson System Foundation 9. That means using the IBM WebSphere technology stack as the Web server and servlet container. But Hager said such a move would actually mean improved support, since Lawson plans to be a single source of support for both the applications and the underlying technology.