Norwegians to Implement Largest-Ever E-Business Project

Norwegian metal supplier Elkem is about to embark on the largest e-business project ever undertaken in Norway, in cooperation with Swedish solutions company Intentia International AB, the two firms announced Friday. Espen Falla, IT Director at Elkem, said the board had taken the position of investing NOK 100 million (US $11 million) in the coming year alone. As one of Norway's largest industry groups, Elkem is a key supplier of raw materials to the steel, chemical, electronic and aluminum industries. Its annual turnover is over NOK 10 billion (US $1,123 million), a figure that tends to put the amount allocated to e-business in perspective. Intentia will supply its Java-based Movex platform which it has developed as a complete e-collaboration solution intended to manage all the demands of the new economy. Among its applications are customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain planning & execution (SCPE), partner relationship management (PRM), business performance management (BPM) and e-business. Intentia's agreement with Elkem is initially for 12 months and consists of both software licenses and consultancy. Intentia will derive NOK 40 million (US $4.5 million) in license revenue and NOK 60 million (US $6.5 million) in consulting revenue from the deal. The deal is a big boost for the Java version of Movex. Elkem plans to run the system in a Unix environment on Sun Solaris systems, helped by 30 consultants from Intentia.