JD Edwards
More info
- Creator
- Jack Thompson, Dan Gregory, Ed McVaney
- Released
- 1977–2003
- Owner
- PeopleSoft (2003), Oracle (from 2005)
- Type
- ERP software
Denver ERP vendor whose software made IBM midrange machines run the books, warehouses and factory floors of thousands of mid-sized companies.
The name is the founders: Jack, Dan and Ed — Jack Thompson, Dan Gregory and Ed McVaney — who started the company in Denver in 1977. Its product, later branded JD Edwards World, ran on IBM's System/38 and then the AS/400, and became the default for manufacturers and distributors who couldn't stretch to SAP.
OneWorld arrived in 1996, a platform-independent client–server rewrite later renamed EnterpriseOne. The transition was late and expensive, and in 2003 PeopleSoft bought the company for about $1.7 billion — the deal that triggered Oracle's bidding war. That is how JD Edwards ended up at Oracle, which still sells and maintains both product lines. A fair number of green-screen terminals are still out there.