Today JDA announced the changing of the guard at the head of the company with long time JDAer – Hamish Brewer moving on. Interim CEO Baljit (Bal) Dail will take over until a full time CEO is found. From an outside perspective this is a surprising announcement. However, from a business stand point this makes sense.
Since the acquisition/merger with Red Prairie in April 2013, the dynamics for JDA has changed. What has been a strategy of acquiring new revenue streams – see Manugistics and i2 acquisition – could not be sustainable. At some point JDA will need to compete with organic development of its own and revenue if it hopes to challenge the likes of SAP and Oracle. It looks as if the board determined that Hamish was not the right person for this new challenge. Mr Brewer does deserve a lot of credit for being able to cobble together a family of supply chain vendors and not only keep the ship afloat but also continue to drive JDA forward.
Whether it is Mr Dail or a new CEO, they will face some challenges:
- How will JDA continue to drive and grow revenue. JDA has the classic problem of a large business, the good is they have a large portfolio of products the negative they have a large portfolio of products. In such verticals as automotive they are facing challenges from the likes of Kinaxis. In the S&OP space the likes of SteelWedge offer a viable option. Of course they always have the threat from SAP and Oracle.
- Speaking of product portfolios…JDA, like many legacy vendors, straddles the world of on premise and cloud offerings. While I think there remains room for both, I think the value that comes from being more “cloud heavy” will start to out weigh on premise. For example companies such as One Network or E2open have leaned heavily on the cloud and in doing so are able to bring added benefits of creating turn key networks. Users who need to integrate large networks of suppliers, customers and partners via their solutions into their supply chain network will lean more and more towards cloud heavy offerings.
The new CEO for JDA will face some interesting challenges. However, the company still has a number of arrows in their quiver. It will be interesting to see how the company moves forward. And what type of background the next CEO has will go a long way in determining where JDA finds itself in 5 years.
Disclosure: I worked at i2 Technologies for 5 years. I left i2 Technologies prior to being purchased by JDA in 2010. 
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