Lawson Software has announced it will offer Lawson Total Care Platinum, a managed hosting offering designed to help customers get the most out of their Lawson ERP investment while minimizing demands on customers' IT resources. Total Care Platinum builds upon Lawson Total Care, the company's tiered maintenance and support program, to provide a total ERP package, from software through support and delivery, including full hosting and application management services.

Lawson Total Care Platinum is designed to simplify the enterprise application ownership experience for customers. With Total Care Platinum, Lawson lays the foundation for its Software as a Service (SaaS) model, by offering customers a single price, contract, and point of contact for all aspects of managed hosting for their Lawson installation, including hosting services, provided by IBM Hosting in its world-class certified data centers.

As part of an expanded alliance between the companies, IBM will also be the primary hosting provider for LawsonÆs future on-demand and hosted offerings. With more than 3,000 joint customers worldwide, IBM and Lawson are focused on helping customers move to an open standards-based service-oriented architecture (SOA), which helps them automate business processes with their customers, partners and suppliers.

ôThis agreement represents a natural progression of our already successful relationship with IBM,ö said Jim Anderson, executive vice president, Lawson Professional Services. ôTotal Care Platinum gives our customers a top-notch hosted ERP solution tailor-made for their industry with much less up-front investment than is required in traditional implementations and use of their Lawson applications. We mean it when we say weÆre going to make it simpler to own and use enterprise applications with Lawson.ö

Total Care Platinum provides the application and technical expertise needed to maintain and optimize Lawson applications in a more predictable, cost-effective manner. The program was designed to help take the burden off customers' internal IT teams for tasks such as corrections and fix packs, custom modifications, upgrades, administration of software installations, security administration, database administration, and system maintenance. With Total Care Platinum, the company says that customers can expect:

• Accountability: Guaranteed service levels, clear associated pricing and quality standards so Lawson customers know up-front what to expect.
• Financial predictability: Cost savings or cost avoidance can be realized by leveraging IBM's world-class data centers and Lawson's global application management expertise.
• Reliability: With contractually committed service levels of 99.7 percent system uptime and response times of 30 minutes or less for issues of critical severity, customers can redirect financial and human capital to core strategic businesses initiatives.
• Benefits Realization: Competitive pricing and world-class services will help Lawson customers realize measurable returns on their investment, the company says.

The Lawson Total Care program was designed based on customer requests for support and maintenance from Lawson that allow options to fit their budget and in-house expertise. With the addition of Total Care Platinum, Lawson Total Care now offers four different levels: Product maintenance and base support (Bronze), more comprehensive support offerings and personalized care (Silver), customer-tailored application management services (Gold), and full application management and hosting (Platinum).

About Lawson Software
Lawson Software provides software and service solutions to 4,000 customers in manufacturing, distribution, maintenance and service sector industries across 40 countries. Lawson's solutions include Enterprise Performance Management, Supply Chain Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Manufacturing Resource Planning, Enterprise Asset Management and industry-tailored applications. The company says that Lawson solutions assist customers in simplifying their businesses or organizations by helping them streamline processes, reduce costs, and enhance business or operational performance. Lawson is headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., and has offices around the world.