Lawson Software today announced part two of its Lawson Cloud Services offering for enterprise software. Available in May 2010, Lawson Internal Cloud Services will bring the benefits of virtualization and cloud computing to customers who want to have an on-premise deployment of their Lawson solutions. Lawson Internal Cloud Services includes Lawson Grid Technology, which will help customers distribute computing tasks for selected Lawson products across a group of computers. The Lawson Grid Technology will help improve flexibility and create the opportunity for lower-cost, high-availability infrastructure.

Lawson Internal Cloud Services features the innovative Lawson Cloud Console and the first two of what Lawson plans to be a series of “virtual appliances.” The first virtual appliances are Lawson Smart Office and Lawson Enterprise Search, two of Lawson’s latest products. Virtual Appliances come “pre-assembled” so the arduous traditional process of manually installing software is no longer needed. These virtual appliances are ready-to-deploy software bundles that include the database, operating system and software application – essentially virtual servers containing everything to begin using the software.

The Lawson Cloud Console allows IT administrators to deploy and manage Lawson Virtual Appliances. The Lawson Cloud Console provides a new ability to click on a Virtual Appliance and deploy it by simply dragging and dropping it to a test, development, training, or production area. This essentially automates complex, manual IT tasks that formerly took weeks or months to complete.

“This is the freedom of separating enterprise software from the machines,” said Jeff Comport, senior vice president of Lawson product management. “The old model of one app per machine will disappear and the days of hundreds of underused machines crowded together in a data center are numbered. With the Lawson Cloud Console, enterprise software will become liquid, fluidly moving to available machines. This approach takes virtualization to a new level and makes it real for enterprise applications because the Virtual Appliance model gives the application the information it needs to operate in a virtualized environment – something the virtualization vendors cannot provide.”

The Lawson Cloud Console is the same tool Lawson itself will use to manage customers who choose Lawson External Cloud Services available on Amazon Web Services for off-premise deployment of their Lawson systems. The Lawson Cloud Console will help Lawson efficiently and effectively manage customer deployments on Amazon Web Services.

The company unveiled the new Lawson Internal Cloud Services offerings during the 2010 Lawson Conference and User Exchange (CUE), which opened today in San Antonio, Texas. The company also offers an online demo of the Cloud Console at www.lawson.com/virtualCUE.

By taking advantage of Lawson Internal Cloud Services, organizations can begin to consolidate their IT infrastructure, centralize administration of enterprise applications, reduce costs and reallocate IT staff to more strategic activities. Lawson Internal Cloud Services includes:

• Lawson Cloud Console – Lawson’s innovative Cloud management tool
• Lawson Virtual Appliances – Cloud-enabled software that can be deployed in a “drag and drop” manner via the Lawson Cloud Console

In addition to simplifying how Lawson applications are configured and installed, the Lawson Cloud Console and Virtual Appliances help deliver and enforce best practices. These new offerings help make delivery of new products or new software versions more repeatable, supportable and automated. This helps reduce chances for human error and speeds time-to-benefit for Lawson customers.

The Lawson Cloud Console is also core to the Lawson External Cloud Services offering announced March 31. The Console is used to deliver the automation needed for Lawson to support a broad number of customers and applications in a single tenant model. “Cloud technology allows for the delivery of full-function, customizable enterprise software in a public cloud environment like Amazon Web Services,” added Comport. “This sets us apart from the vanilla, one-size-fits-all software offered through SaaS vendors.”

Lawson will feature the Lawson Cloud Console and Virtual Appliances on the CUE mainstage during presentations from Lawson President and CEO Harry Debes and Lawson Executive Vice President Dean Hager today. Lawson will also have teams of people deployed during CUE to provide product demonstrations and answer customer questions.