Cray Inc. Selects J.D. Edwards 5 Software and Services

DENVER--In an effort to improve its decision-making capabilities while continuing to reduce costs, Cray Inc., a leading provider of supercomputing solutions, has selected collaborative enterprise software from J.D. Edwards & Company. The J.D. Edwards 5 applications selected by Cray include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Business Intelligence (BI). The company has also chosen J.D. Edwards as the sole implementation and training partner for its new applications. "Cray focuses on marketing, manufacturing, and servicing the world's largest supercomputers to solve customers' most challenging technical problems. We believe that J.D. Edwards software will streamline these key functions extremely well," said Nancy Soderquist, Cray's CIO. "J.D. Edwards' manufacturing capabilities, flexibility, and solid, proven financials will provide a strong, integrated back-office foundation and will also enable our front-office sales and service capabilities." Installed on Sun platforms, J.D. Edwards 5 will provide Cray's organization with consistent and integrated systems. The CRM solution will help Cray understand the future needs of its customers more effectively. The BI solution will enhance its marketing analysis capabilities. Cray's implementation goal is to create a streamlined front-end opportunity management process that feeds manufacturing systems, allowing the company to plan inventory levels and product schedules. Before selecting J.D. Edwards this August, Cray, a Seattle-based company employing over 800 people globally, went through a rigorous vendor evaluation process in search of the right partner. "J.D. Edwards is committed to helping Cray enhance its profitability in 2003 and beyond by providing integrated software and services which enable the total Cray enterprise to access timely and accurate data," said J.D. Edwards Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Les Wyatt. "Our services organization is looking forward to a successful implementation and to an aggressive skills transfer program. This way, Cray can effectively support the implementation in the long run, which was one of its key requirements." The newest generation of the company's offering, J.D. Edwards 5 is a comprehensive family of modular, Web-enabled collaborative enterprise software products and services. J.D. Edwards 5 is designed to enable customers to match specific software components to specific business requirements while maintaining the value of their IT investments. J.D. Edwards 5 improves the profitability and efficiency of mid-sized and large enterprises by automating business processes and increasing visibility into the operations of an organization and its customers, suppliers and partners.