Jade Group Announce First Partner In Japan

Enterprise software development tool vendor JADE Group have announced that Dot Shell Co Ltd, a leading MRP software company, have become the first JADE Partner in Japan.

Dot Shell (www.dotshell.co.jp) have joined the JADE Partner program with a view to redeveloping their flagship MRP product DMCS (Dot Shell Manufacturing Control System) in JADE, says Marc Ward of the company's International Affairs Division.

"Our strategic direction is to push DMCS into the ERP space, and we have begun that process by adding an accounting module," says Mr Ward, pointing to other planned modules such as human resources and sales prediction.

"DMCS has been very successful because the alternatives, ERP packages like SAP or Baan, are simply too expensive for middle-sized Japanese companies. We can implement DMCS for around $US300,000, compared to an average of $US6 million for many ERP solutions."

Dot Shell, with seventy staff in Japan, has annual revenues of around $US10 million. They support hundreds of DMCS sites in Japan spread across numerous industry sectors.

The average DMCS installation has around 20 users, and the current version can be scaled up to around 40-50 users. Dot Shell also has a sister company in China with a staff of 30 developers.

Mr Ward says Dot Shell recently identified a need for greater development flexibility. "DMCS, although a package solution, has three different version to suit different implementation types, offers some sub-versions and can be further modified to suit customer requirements."

David Van Rhee, a Senior Design Engineer for Dot Shell, says they were looking for a tool set that enabled them to develop a base product that could be customised and maintained easily and cost effectively. "Object orientation was a logical route for building this base."

JADE, as an integrated, object-oriented programming technology, fitted neatly with what they wanted. "It took us just a few minutes of reviewing the JADE web site to realise this was the kind of tool we needed."

Mr Van Rhee says JADE's support of Unicode, the 16 bit standard for character representation critical for visually complex languages like Japanese, was a fundamental requirement. JADE also provides object model support and development tools to make the creation of multi-language systems, or the translation of existing JADE systems, easier. JADE offers a stand-alone application that extracts forms and strings for third party translation, and provides sophisticated support within the development environment for developers wanting to create applications that support multiple Windows locales.

JADE Group General Manager Owen Scott said Dot Shell's experience reflected that of many other software development organisations with which the company had dealt. "With their existing tool sets they simply can't modify enterprise software packages or bespoke systems quickly and cost effectively enough. JADE offers a speed of development and flexibility of deployment that is very attractive to these organisations."

Mr Scott says the signing of Dot Shell is an important step in the company's expansion strategy. "JADE Group now have Partners in both Japan and Korea who will play an important role in converting the considerable interest we are attracting from South East Asia into members of the JADE Partner Pr ogram."

"We are also delighted that we now have the opportunity to prove that we can support a developer in Shizuoka, Japan as well one in Sydney, Australia or Christchurch, New Zealand."
ENDS

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