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 and his brother Paul Baan entered what was to become the ERP industry. The
Baan company focused on the creation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.
Jan Baan developed his first computer program on Durango F-85 computers in BASIC language.
In the early '80s, Baan Company began to develop application on Unix computers with C and
self-developed Baan-C language, whose syntax was very similar to BASIC language[1].
Baan gained its popularity in the early nineties. Baan software is famous for its Dynamic
Enterprise Modeler (DEM), technical architecture and its 4GL language. Baan 4GL and Tools
nowadays is still considered to be one of the most efficient and productive database application
development platforms. Baan became a real threat to market leader SAP after winning a large
Boeing deal in 1994. It went IPO in 1995 and became a public listed company in Amsterdam and
US Nasdaq. Several large consulting firms throughout the world partnered to implement Baan IV
for multi-national companies. It acquired several other software companies to enrich its product
porfolio, including Aurum, Berclain, Coda and Caps Logistics. Sales growth rate was once
claimed to reach 91% per year.
However the fall of the Baan Company began in 1998. The management exaggerated company
revenue by booking "sales" of software licenses that were actually transferred to a related
distributor. The discovery of this "creative" revenue manipulation led to a sharp decline of Baan's
stock price at the end of 1998.[2]
In June 2000, facing worsening financial difficulties, law suits and reporting seven consecutive
quarterly losses and bleak prospects, Baan was sold at a price of US$700 million to Invensys,[3] a
UK automation, controls, and process solutions group to become a unit of its Software and
Services Division. Laurens van der Tang was the president of this unit. With the acquisition of
Baan, Invensys's CEO Allen Yurko began to offer "Sensor to Boardroom" solutions to customers.
In June 2003, after Allen Yurko stepped down, Invensys sold its Baan unit to SSA Global
Technologies for US$ 135 million.
Upon acquiring the Baan software, SSA renamed Baan as SSA ERP Ln. In August 2005, SSA
Global released a new version of Baan, named SSA ERP LN 6.1. In May 2006, SSA was
acquired by Infor Global Solutions of Atlanta, which was a major ERP consolidator in the
market.
Today Baan ERP software is still used by thousands of companies in the world, the majority on
version BaanIVc4 and ERP LN and it is still best in class ERP for mainly manufacturing sector.
Infor (Global solutions) with its product line have one of the biggest customer bases - 70.000
customers

Product version
Triton 1.0 to 2.2d, 3.0 to last version of Triton is 3.1bx, then the product is renamed to Baan

Baan 4.0 (last version of BaanIV is BaanIVc4 SP26) & Industry extensions (A&D,...)
Baan 5.0 (last version of BaanV is Baan5.0 c SP25)
Baan 5.1, 5.2 (for specific customers only)
SSA ERP 6.1 /Infor ERP LN 6.1 (latest version is ERP Ln 6.1 FP6, released in December, 2009)
Infor ERP Ln 6.1 supports Unicode and comes with following language translation. The base
language is English.
1. Dutch
2. French
3. German
4. Italian
5. Brazilian Portuguese
6. Spanish
7. Japanese
8. Korean
9. Simplified Chinese
10. Traditional Chinese

Supported Platform and Database (Server)

Server Platform:
Windows Server, Linux, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, AS400(Obsolete), OS390 (Obsolete)
Database:
Oracle, DB2, Informix, MS SQL Server, MySQL (version 6.1 only), Bisam (Obsolete)

Standard Modules
Baan IV modules:
Common (tc), Finance (tf), Project (tp),Manufacturing (ti),Distribution (td),Process
(ps),Transportation (tr),Service (ts),Enterprise Modeler (tg),Constraint Planning (cp),Tools
(tt),Utilities (tu)
ERP Ln 6.1 modules:
Enterprise Modeler (tg), Common,Taxation (tc),People(bp), Financials (tf),Project (tp),Enterprise
Planning (cp),Order Management (td), Electronic Commerce (ec),Central Invoicing
(ci),Manufacturing (ti),Warehouse Management (wh),Freight Management (fm), Service (ts),
Quality Management (qm), Object Data Management (dm), Tools (tt)

Baan Virtual Machine - bshell

Bshell is the core component of Baan application server. It is a process virtual machine to run
Baan 4GL language. Bshell were ported to different server platforms and make Baan program
scripts platform indepedent. For example, a Baan session developed on Windows platform can
be copied to Linux platform without re-compiling the application code. Bshell is similar to
nowaday's Java VM or .Net CLR.

TheRise&FallofBaanCo.
1978
JanBaan,ahighschooldropoutandformerclerkataslaughterhouse,foundsasoftwarecompanyinhis
ruralhometownofBarneveld,theNetherlands.
1993
Seeingabrightfutureforenterprisesoftware,Connecticut'sGeneralAtlanticPartnersinvests$21million
inBaan,buyingonethirdofthecompany.
1994
JanBaansellssoftwaresystemtoBoeing.ThebreakthroughcontractraisesBaan'sprofileandpreparesit
foranIPO.
1995
BeforeBaanlistssharesonNasdaqandtheAmsterdamexchange,theBaanbrothersputcontrolof
companyinthehandsoftheircharitablefoundation.Inthenextthreeyears,thestocksoarsto13timesits
previousvalue.
1996
Buoyedbystrongstock,Baangoesonbuyingspree,snappingupninedifferentsoftwarecompaniesover
twoyears,includingAurumarivalofSiebelSystems.
1997
Withdemandforbackofficesoftwareatanalltimehigh,Baanrevenuesoars91%.
1998
InApril,thecompany'ssharepricepeaksat$54.Thenitadjustsfirstquarter1998salesby$43million,
explainingthatmanyofthesalesweremadetoitsowndistributioncompany.Investorsselldownshares
15%intwodays.
JULY'98
Baanbrotherswithdrawfromthecompany.TomTinsley,aformerMcKinsey&Co.consultantwho
joinedBaanin1995,takesoverCEOposition.AsBaanstockfalls,banksthatwereholdingtheBaan
brothers'stockasloancollateralunload8%ofthecompany.
NOV.'98
PresidentMaryColeman,formerlyofAurum,leadsmovetoreduce1,200jobs.

MAY'99
Tinsleyquits,takingajobatGeneralAtlanticPartners,thesameVCfirmthatputBaanonthemap.He's
replacedbyMaryColeman.
JUNE'99
TheBaanbrothers'VanenburgVenturesinvestmentfirm,whichholds20%ofBaanstock,quietlysells
morethanhalfofitbytheendoftheyear.
JAN.'00
Withfinancesplummeting,MaryColemanquits.NewCEOPierreEveraertsearchesforabuyer.
MAY'00
Britain'sInvensysannounces$700millionofferforBaan,pricingsharesat$2.85.Aug.1:Dealgoes
through.
LATER2000
TwoofVanenburg'snewsoftwarecompaniesarescheduledforIPOsontheNasdaq.ThisincludesTop
Tier,akeysoftwaresuppliertolongtimeBaanrivalSAP.

The Fall of Baan

How ineffective management and bad luck brought down

the Dutch software superstar

Barneveld is an out-of-the-way stop, a Dutch country town of 48,000

known for its chicken farms, egg auctions, and the brothers Baan.
It's here that Jan and Paul Baan created their own rare bird:
software maker Baan Co., one of the great success stories of the
1990s. Baan, a maker of software for running corporations' internal
operations, was among the first European tech companies to be
backed by U.S. venture capital. It offered hope that Old World
companies could operate as nimbly--and soar as high--as their
Silicon Valley brethren. Sure enough, sales sextupled between
1994 and 1997, and the Baan brothers, both members of the
conservative Dutch Reformed Church, flew in their jet between
Barneveld, Silicon Valley, and a host of charities they sponsored
around the world. Jan boasted to reporters that it was easier to
make money than to give it

That wasn't true for long. Pummeled by questions about its finances,
blindsided by an industry downturn, and undermined by poor
management, Baan's stock collapsed in 1998, and the company
limped along without much hope of recovery. The Baan brothers
departed two years ago and pocketed most of their profits before
the final cave-in. Not so many of Baan's investors: Those who
bought shares at the peak in early 1998 have suffered a 95%
tumble, representing more than $10 billion in value. In class
actions, thousands of shareholders in the U.S. allege the Baan
brothers and other company officials benefited from inside
information to dump shares before the bad news spread.
The end of this saga came on Aug. 1, when Britain's Invensys PLC
put Baan out of its misery. A $14 billion specialist in factory
automation, Invensys scooped up what was left of Baan, including
4,300 employees, for a mere $700 million. Among the first orders
of business, says Invensys' American CEO Allen Yurko, is quickly
shutting down regional offices and cutting 1,000 workers. ''When
we start getting orders, maybe we can hire some of them back,'' he
says. Neither of the Baan brothers would comment.
How did it come to this? Baan rose on the back of Jan Baan's
vision--then collapsed when he and his lieutenants were unable to
weather a market downturn and exploit the opportunities he
foresaw. The tattered company leaves plenty of lessons in its wake.
For investors, it's a sobering reminder to read the fine print on a
company's prospectus and financial reports before pushing the
''trade'' button on their PCs. For European entrepreneurs, several
steps behind the Americans in developing a New Economy, Baan's
crash shows that homegrown companies not only must embrace a
relentless quarter-to-quarter focus but they also must be prepared
to follow strict accounting procedures--unlike Baan, which ran afoul
of U.S. accounting rules.
HOLY ORDERS. At the heart of Baan was a fatal split, one
represented by the brothers and their dual fascinations: God and
geld. Jan, the salesman, focused on persuading executives to hand
over $10 million to $50 million on a promise that his software could
make their companies nimble and efficient. He could talk circles
around his biggest competitors, including German powerhouse SAP.
''Baan was above all a P.R. challenge,'' says SAP Co-Chairman Hasso
Plattner. Meanwhile, younger brother Paul, the chief operating
officer, nudged Baan toward a more religious path. The goal was to
take the company's financial harvest and, using a complex

ownership structure, plow it into good works, such as building

orphanages in Indonesia. In the end, the brothers couldn't have it
both ways. Their enterprise could not be both commercial and
religious, public and secretive.
For those who had faith in Baan, its demise takes a psychological
toll. ''My emotional reaction? Disappointment. I thought things
would have turned out better,'' says William O. Grabe, a partner in
venture-capital firm General Atlantic Partners, which bankrolled
Baan's international expansion with $21 million.
The story begins more than two decades ago. Jan Baan, a former
accountant, spotted the opportunity for using software to
automate the planning processes for manufacturers and started
Baan as a consulting firm in 1978. Most of Baan's engineers back
then were members of the Dutch Reformed Church. They kept their
labs free of swearing, mandated long skirts for women, and shut
down on Sundays--even when customers were clamoring for help.
The other six days of the week they translated Baan's visions into
elegant code.
At the dawn of the 1990s, Baan saw a big wave coming that could
lift his company into the ranks of superstars. Companies were
revamping all of their internal processes to make them more
efficient. The logical step, Baan thought, would be to stitch
together a set of software programs to handle all of a company's
internal data-processing needs--from manufacturing and inventory
management to accounting and human resources.
Unfortunately, he wasn't the only person to see this coming. In
Germany, SAP was quicker to reach this budding ''enterprise
market.'' SAP, which went public in 1992, already had homegrown
companies, from Daimler to Bayer and Hoechst, in its back pocket.
SAP had money to hire an army of engineers that could build a
daunting lead. Baan, sitting in rural Barneveld, lacked the funds to
pursue his dream. In 1993, the money arrived in the person of
Grabe.
It was a golden opportunity. With the General Atlantic cash in
hand--a tremendous amount for that era--Baan could quickly
expand to the rest of Europe and North America. But to catch
market leader SAP, Baan needed to make a splash, and that
required landing a world-class customer. The chance came in 1994.
Boeing Co. was shopping for a program to tie together its vast

manufacturing processes, and Baan was a finalist facing SAP and

Oracle.
To win the contract, Jan Baan pulled together his top consultants
and had them create a computer simulation of how Baan's software
could extend across the Boeing organization. In fact, neither Baan
nor its competitors had yet produced this type of distributed
software. ''We were working like hell,'' recalls one former manager
who worked with Jan. ''But it wasn't ready when he went in for the
meeting. We were praying, 'Please work, please work.''' It went
flawlessly. Baan offered the program to Boeing for less than $25
million--a 50% discount. SAP lost out.
''GOING GANGBUSTERS.'' Baan and SAP were a study in contrasts.
While the German company was deliberate, focused, and
dependable, the Baan brothers winged it. SAP programmers met
exacting specs and deadlines. At Baan, say former employees, the
voluble Jan simply sketched out the vision. The programmers
improvised, sometimes brilliantly, adding new capabilities that
their bosses hadn't even asked for. This freedom made Baan wildly
popular among programmers. But management rarely knew what it
was getting, or when.
With the market booming and the Boeing contract in hand, the
operational glitches didn't weigh Baan down. Indeed, with a 1995
initial public offering coming up, the brothers focused on
organizing their coming fortune. They put in place a dizzying
financial structure that reflected their dual goals of pursuing God
and profits. They placed their 39% share of Baan into a holding
company, initially called Baan Investments and later Vanenburg
Group. Then they folded that company into a charitable holding
company, Oikonomos Foundation.
This structure permitted the Baan brothers to hedge their bets. The
public company maintained clear accounts and attracted investors.
Meanwhile, the private side, Baan Investments, would take on
risks--in the form of investments in tech startups. To finance these
deals, Baan Investments, headed by Paul, took commercial loans
from Dutch banks, using Baan Co. stock as collateral. They also
formed a private company, Baan Business Systems, that became
the leading distributor of Baan software.
This unusual arrangement didn't faze investors. The 1995 IPO,
launched on the Amsterdam stock exchange as well as the Nasdaq,

arrived as the enterprise market was exploding. The industry was

growing 40% a year. There was plenty of opportunity for Baan,
which was enjoying 60% to 90% growth. ''Everyone was going
gangbusters,'' recalls Bob Williams, who headed the Baan team at
Noblestar, consultants in Washington, D.C.
For Baan, the key was gaining market share. Once customers
bought the first round of its software, Baan was betting they would
sign up for more programs, since swapping out computer systems
could be costly and complicated. So Baan focused almost entirely
on landing new accounts--and skimped on customer service. ''I
don't think we were ever told directly to f--- the customer, but that
was the message,'' says one former account manager at Baan.
SHOPPING SPREE. As the enterprise market boomed, Paul Baan left
the company to focus on charity and the fast-growing private
businesses. Jan, meanwhile, was looking at the future of the
market. As early as 1995, before the rest of the industry caught on,
he was predicting that companies would soon be eager to extend
their enterprise systems outside the company walls. He envisioned
vast networks that reached out to customers and suppliers and
sales forces. SAP was likely to attack the same market, of course.
Baan decided to outrace the German giant by gobbling up software
companies. To carry out the strategy, Baan hired as its president an
18-year McKinsey & Co. consulting veteran, Tom Tinsley. Through
the next two years, Baan used its pricey stock to snatch nine
companies, including Aurum Software, a San Francisco maker of
sales-force automation software.
Trouble was, Baan and Tinsley couldn't make their formula work.
Costs skyrocketed, since each unit maintained its own
administration. Sales forces bumped into each other as they visited
the same customers. ''The very premise of this was an integrated
solution,'' says analyst David Caruso of AMR Research. ''They
totally missed it.''
Worse, they often failed to even stitch the software together. Take
Coda, a financial software company that Baan bought in 1998 for
$86.6 million. Baan's software engineers in Barneveld were
reluctant to part with the finance program they had devised. And
when managers told them to integrate Coda into Baan's programs,
the engineers, says one ex-Baan employee, simply found other
work to do. Coda, until Baan unloaded it early this year for $50
million, remained a stand-alone product.

Baan's numbers couldn't withstand the internal conflicts. Under

extreme pressure to keep revenues growing fast, the company
transferred $43 million worth of licenses to the Baan private
distribution company and booked them as sales to outside
companies. In April, 1998, Baan had to reduce its earnings.
Ultimately, that grim announcement spelled the end of Baan as an
independent company. ''It became a highflier when U.S. investors
took over,'' says analyst Jeroen van Harten of Rabobank. ''And when
U.S. investors saw something fishy, they dumped it.''
BAILING OUT. Overnight, Baan turned from Europe's success story
into a case study of what ailed the Continent. Angry American
analysts criticized its slow management and cozy insider deals. As
they downgraded the stock, all of the elements that Baan was built
on--rising numbers, a soaring stock, and an expanding customer
base--slammed into reverse. Customers, including Siemens and
Carrier Corp., removed Baan programs and replaced them with SAP
offerings.
At first, Jan Baan tried desperately to repair the damage. To ease
the confusion between the private and public companies, he
renamed Baan Investments, calling the private company Vanenburg
Ventures. That summer, he resigned--leaving a pair of Americans,
Tinsley and former Aurum CEO Mary Coleman, soon to become
Baan's president, to sprinkle the Dutch company with Silicon Valley
magic. The American team, later joined by James Mooney, a chief
financial officer from IBM, jetted between the offices in Holland and
a new American headquarters in Virginia, working frantically to cut
costs and line up financing. ''There was still passion in people's
eyes,'' recalls Rohit Agarwal, a former vice-president for strategic
marketing who left Baan early this year. ''People still believed.''
Not so investors. Even before the disastrous earnings restatement,
cagey investors were dumping the stock. Putnam Investments,
citing the complicated corporate structure, sold its 9.3% stake in
the company in late '97. Even Baan's biggest fans started selling.
General Atlantic started selling its holdings in 1996 and continued
through the summer of 1998. It was later that year that lawyers in
the U.S. filed shareholder suits, asserting that Baan directors had
unloaded stock while privy to upcoming bad news. Baan officials
deny it. Lawyers say a trial is likely next year.
The Baan brothers, too, reduced their holdings. In some cases,

though, it wasn't voluntary. As the Baan stock price plummeted in

the summer of 1998, Dutch banks that were holding Vanenburg
shares as loan collateral unloaded them. This contributed to the
run on Baan, which fell from $54 to $11 between April and October,
1998, and lowered the Baan brothers' holdings to 30%. Through
1999, Jan Baan sold shares, dropping the Vanenburg holdings to
less than 10% of the company. By Dutch law, Vanenburg was
obliged to report when that threshold was crossed--something it
failed to do. While Dutch regulators could pursue Vanenburg in
court, they have taken no action yet.
It wasn't a bad time to sell. In truth, Baan Co. had little chance to
mount a comeback. For two years, customers had hurried to buy
and install new enterprise systems as a defense against the
dreaded Year 2000 software glitch. As the millennium approached,
a lull hit the industry. This bruised SAP--and laid Baan out flat. In
May, CEO Tinsley left, exhausted and demoralized, according to
people who were there at the time. The company's new CEO,
Coleman, flew the world, attempting with no success to recast
Baan as an Internet company. On Jan. 5, 2000, Coleman quit, on the
eve of a disastrous earnings announcement.
The only thing left to do was sell the company. The Baan directors
appointed a caretaker CEO, Pierre Everaert, who shopped for a
buyer and found Invensys. Baan's customers, eager for stability,
cheered the bid on. And Boeing, after Invensys had the deal nailed
down, said it would buy the latest upgrade of Baan's enterprise
system.
Not surprisingly, one of the easiest transactions Invensys' Yurko
made was with Jan Baan himself. Earlier this summer, he made a
pilgrimage to Barneveld. There, he says, he met a smiling Jan Baan,
who tendered his remaining shares. Now, Invensys will move to
liquidate Baan as a public company and operate it, under the Baan
name, as part of its software division.
And Jan Baan? He's looking ahead, as always. Unlike thousands of
investors, he emerged from the Baan Co. saga with a large
fortune--and was able to plow with his brother more than $150
million of his winnings into a portfolio of more than a dozen Net
companies. One of them, TopTier, an e-commerce software maker,
is preparing its IPO just as the old Baan is falling off the Nasdaq.
It's a new beginning for Jan Baan, who has learned at least one

crucial Silicon Valley lesson from his odyssey: how to profit from
failures.

Type: Public Company

Address: Galvanistraat 9, P.O. Box 250, 6710 BG Ede
Telephone: (31) 318-691691
Fax: (31) 318-691690
Web: http://www.baan.com
Employees: 3,500
Sales: US$ 684 million (1997)
Stock Exchanges: NASDAQ; Amsterdam
Ticker Symbol: BAANF
Incorporated: 1978 as Financieel Management Begeleidingsbureau
SIC: 7372 Prepackaged Software; 6719 Holding Companies Nec

The Baan Company is one of the world's top producers of enterprise business management and
client/server software systems, with more than 3,000 customers at 5,000 sites around the world.
From its dual headquarters in The Netherlands and in Reston, Virginia, Baan oversees a global
organization of subsidiary and partnership companies, both for product development and for
distribution and implementation of the company's products. Baan's 20 years of experience
developing automated software solutions for manufacturing and business systems has placed it in
a strong position to meet the 1990s boom in client/server systems technology. The company has
grown from being a US $35 million company in the early 1990s to earning nearly US $700
million in 1997 sales. Since going public in 1995, Baan's market capitalization of some $7 billion
has won it a place on the Fortune 500.
Baan has long been a pioneer in offering open-ended, platform-independent Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) tools to companies. Under the umbrella name "BaanSeries", the company's
products feature a modular architecture, enabling the company to offer client-specific solutions
using standardized components developed by Baan and its partners. This feature sets Baan apart
from its competitors' systems, offering a flexibility of deployment and development to meet
customers' current and future needs. Baan components span the entire range of manufacturing
and business systems, from inventory and ordering, to sales and customer support services, to
financial system and forecasting processes. In addition, Baan products offer multi-lingual support
with translations of its software in more than 20 languages, and a distribution and support
presence in some 60 countries as well as multi-currency support. Furthermore, the company
offers Internet and World Wide Web functionality, and support for Unix, Windows, and
Microsoft BackOffice and FrontOffice applications.
Jan Baan seemed far from the most likely candidate to head one of the world's leading
information technology companies. Born in 1946 in Rijssen, Baan's father was a carpenter, and
his grandfather was originally a farmer and later an owner of a bus company. Baan himself left
school at the age of sixteen, going to work in a meat packing plant. After fulfilling his mandatory
military service, Baan found work in an administrative services office. In 1970, Baan went to

work for a building materials supply firm. In 1972, after the death of his supervisor, Baan was
appointed head of the company's administrative services department. At that time, the company
was automating its systems, and Baan's position introduced him to emerging computer
technology, as he became responsible for automating the company's bookkeeping functions.
By the mid-1970s, Baan had begun working as a management consultant to an accounting firm,
where he gained new experience that would prove central to his later career. It was then that
Baan, with a family of five children, decided to set out on his own. In 1978, Baan formed his
own management consulting firm, Financieel Management Begeleidingsbureau Baan (FMBB),
renting an office in Barneveld. FMBB's original focus was on providing models to assist
companies in their financial planning; Baan sought to provide tools, in the form of information,
to enable companies to make calculated decisions. Using a programmable calculator, Baan
worked on refining his models.
A year later, Baan had succeeded in building up a list of clients, and had hired his first employee,
Centinus van Haberden. Baan's work had shown him that there was a need among small
businesses for better record-keeping tools. A turning point for the company came when one of
FMBB's clients, a computer importer, paid Baan with an early computer, a Durango, one of the
first small computers to be based on the Intel 086 processor. No Dutch-language software yet
existed for the Durango, so Baan decided to design the software himself, hiring programmers to
write software that would enable him to offer record-keeping and other administrative services to
his clients as well. In this way, FMBB expanded its services beyond consulting toward an early
systems management approach. By late 1980, Baan had brought in his own programmer to create
programs tailor-made for each of the firm's clients.
Baan was determined to offer a complete automation solution to his customers, which by then
included a growing number of administrative services firms. FMBB became an authorized dealer
for Durango computers in the Netherlands; thus, in addition to the company's consulting and
administrative services, FMBB could offer its clients tailor-made computer hardware and
software solutions. The Durango sales quickly took on a central role for the company, and Baan
sold off FMBB's administrative services activities to van Haberden, who was then starting out on
his own. The changing focus of the company led to the adoption of a new name: Baan
Automation. The company also moved its offices to a farm in Terschuur, which also served as the
Baan family home.
Computer software of the period remained hardware-specific. Most programs were written for a
particular brand of computer, in that computer's specific language, and would work only on that
computer. Programs tended to be created from the ground up and tailored to a single client's
needs. Baan's insight was to see the need for what he referred to as an 'industrial' approach to
software programming. Instead of taking the tailor-made approach, Baan instead sought to create
a standard program that could then be easily adapted to each client's requirements. The resulting
software would be less expensive to produce, and less expensive to the company's clients. The
off-the-shelf concept would continue to mark the Baan Company's products through the 1990s.
By the summer of 1981, Baan had determined to develop his company into a full-fledged system
house. At this time, he brought in two new partners--his younger brother, Paul Baan, and Tom

Bakker, a former colleague from the building materials supply firm. Each of the three set up an
office, with Jan Baan remaining in Terschuur, Paul Baan opening an office in Rijssen, and
Bakker setting up an office in Middelburg. In that way, Baan established itself as a national
company in The Netherlands. Paul Baan became his brother's partner, with each man owning 50
percent of the company, and serving as co-directors, a relationship that would continue up until
the company's 1995 public offering.
The three Baan branches quickly developed particular areas of expertise, with the Terschuur
office specializing in accounting and production firms, Rijssen focused on the building and
construction market, and Middelburg on the trade industry. The company's client list--chiefly
small and mid-sized companies--was growing rapidly, and achieving a national scale. By 1984,
Baan decided to group its activities into a single location, centralizing the firm in Terschuur. A
year later, the company's growing number of employees led Baan to construct a new building in
Barneveld. By 1985, the company employed more than 120 people.
In the early 1980s, Baan's software, as with most of the computer industry at the time, remained
dependent on a single platform. This system, however, was soon feeling the strain of rapid
developments being made in computing technology--particularly the introduction of what would
become the first personal computers. On a trip to California in 1981, Baan had discovered an
emerging operating system, called Unix, which promised platform-independence--that is, the
capability to run on any type of computer hardware. Unix, moreover, offered the ability to
control several computer-clients from a central computer, the server, which linked the system to
share resources, such as printers and other network operations. While this latter ability would not
take on its full importance until the early 1990s, Baan was attracted to the possibilities of
platform-independence, and became among the first to bring Unix to the Netherlands.
Working with Unix required Baan to convert all of its software from the Durango's proprietary
language to the Unix's code. The company created its own set of tools, computerizing the
conversion process. Baan, meanwhile, continued to supply Durango-based systems to a client
base reluctant to embrace the new operating system. But Baan's early interest in Unix positioned
the company to become the Netherlands' premier Unix systems provider in the second half of the
decade. The company also found itself perfectly positioned to bridge the demise of the Durango
and other proprietary hardware systems.
By the mid-1980s, Baan, now known as Baan Info Systems, had succeeded in building a strong
library of tools, including its own Unix shell, that the company could implement for its clients'
needs. While the company had successfully broken the 'built-to-order' mold, its software
nevertheless represented an evolutionary process--the software would be expanded, and
otherwise adapted, for each new client's needs. The company's three areas of specialization had,
in fact, led to the development of three separate software systems, each with its own architecture,
making it impossible for the company to offer a fully integrated package. The fact that the
company had become the Netherland's premier Unix systems supplier did not prevent Baan from
recognizing its own limited future. The Netherlands remained a small market, and the company's
software--despite being translated into English and German during the 1980s--was not suited for
an international market composed of large-scale and increasingly global businesses. While the
company managed to score several successes--including an implementation order from Italy's

Olivetti in 1988, and a similar OEM agreement with France's Bull in 1989--Baan looked forward
to a scenario of continuing to sell its MRP (manufacturing resource planning) software for
another couple of years, then abandoning software development to become a third-party vendor
for other systems.
Instead, in 1985 Baan decided to risk stepping backwards. While continuing to develop its
existing package, the company set to work developing a new software system, beginning from
scratch. The new system, dubbed Triton, would not be ready until 1989. The new product's
launch would also coincide with a drastic reorganization of the company.
In 1989, Baan suffered a dramatic drop-off in new orders. The company's reliance on its firstgeneration software had meant that it had fallen behind its competitors. The company had been
attempting an aggressive domestic and international expansion, opening a series of sales offices-including US offices in Grand Rapids, Michigan and in Menlo Park, California. The stock
market crash of October 1987 and the long slump of the high technology industry through much
of the 1980s, however, provided limited perspective for the type of financial backing Baan
required for its expansion. The company, forced to fund itself, had meanwhile become bloated
with a variety of additional services and activities, including technical maintenance, and even
tools supplies. The company became determined to regroup around its core software
development operations. The 1989 reorganization slashed the company's payroll--from 400 down
to 215--and exposed Baan to a great deal of criticism in the Netherlands.
Emerging from its reorganization, Baan had now become a holding company for two operations:
Baan Info Systems was placed under Paul Baan's leadership, and focused on distribution
activities to the company's domestic market, while Baan International was led by Jan Baan, and
continued the company's software development while serving its distribution needs on the
international front. Through the first half of the 1990s, Baan continued to experience revenue
losses, as customers proved reluctant to return.
By the end of 1990, Baan showed signs that it had weathered the crisis. Aiding the company was
a new policy of seeking OEM agreements providing Baan software to companies to sell under
their own name. Agreements with companies including IBM and ASK Computer Systems in the
early 1990s helped add some $10 million to Baan's till. The company also began to develop an
international distribution network, this time turning to third-party and other partnerships, instead
of developing a more capital-intensive, company-owned network. The distribution network-which the company would later gradually dismantle in favor of direct ownership--helped the
company survive the early years of the 1990s. The company remained extremely small. In 1991,
it's revenues amounted to just US $35 million.
Baan's turning point came with the 1991 introduction of its Triton software. If the company had
been lagging the competition, Triton now gave Baan an advance of several years over its
competitors. Triton also represented the fulfillment of Baan's 'industrial' vision. Featuring a truly
modular concept, Triton customers could purchase a system tailored to their needs from among a
hundred or more components, all designed to work interactively. With a modular system,
moreover, the client discovered a new flexibility: where competing systems required clients to
determine the current and future needs at the time of the purchase contract, Triton would enable

clients to add-on and otherwise evolve their systems processes as their needs evolved or
changed.
Baan's system quickly attracted the attention of the investment firm General Atlantic Partners,
which foresaw the coming boom in client/server technology rapidly becoming an essential
component in the increasingly globalized economy. General Atlantic Partners offered to invest in
Baan--an offer Jan Baan initially rejected. Yet Baan's international customers were increasingly
demanding worldwide support directly from Baan, requiring the company to develop a companyowned distribution and support network. In 1993, Baan agreed to sell 34 percent of the company
to General Atlantic Partners, in exchange for their investment of $18 million. With this capital,
Baan was able to begin building a new direct sales and distribution network, including
establishing a second US headquarters in California's Silicon Valley. At the same time, the
company phased out its OEM sales.
Soon Baan was attracting large-scale customers. Among the first were the US's Snap-On Tools
and Northern Telecom. Baan's success was solidified, however, with a $20 million contract from
Boeing in 1994, which helped it edge out more than 60 competitors, including industry leaders
Oracle and SAP. The contract gave Baan instant name recognition and boosted its revenues for
that year to nearly US $123 million. In order to consolidate its reputation in the U.S.--which
alone accounted for more than 41 percent of worldwide software sales--Baan next turned to the
stock exchange. Listing as a public company would give the company's image the added stability
and maturity necessary for attracting the world's large-scale, globally-based organizations.
Baan's 1995 listing proved to be among the year's most successful IPOs. The initial offer price
was adjusted up from $12 per share to $16 per share before trading even began; the offering,
oversubscribed by some 40 times, would top $25 per share by the end of its first trading day.
Two years later, and after a stock split, the company's stock price would soar past $61 per share-giving the company a market capitalization of nearly US $7 billion and placing it among the
world's leading software developers. At the same time, Jan Baan, recognizing this new
development in the modest business he had founded nearly 20 years before, brought in Tom
Tinsley, formerly with McKinsey & Company, to serve as the company's president--and later
chairman--in order to lead Baan's future growth. Jan Baan remained involved in the company's
operations as its CEO.
In the late 1990s, Baan continued to play a leading role in the development of client/server and
ERP systems, including being among the first to develop systems for the Microsoft BackOffice
and FrontOffice lines. In 1997 and 1998, Baan introduced its next generation of products,
grouped under the name BaanSeries, including its Dynamic Enterprise Modeling-Strategy
Execution (DEMSE), a graphical interface enabling clients to expand and re-deploy their Baanbased systems in real-time, and an enhanced version of the company's Orgware products,
developed specifically for the needs of globally-operating enterprises. Baan was poised to
increase its share of the industry. Its future plans called for the company to advance from its 5
percent market share (in 1997) to becoming a US $1 billion company among the top five
software developers in the world by the year 2000.