Ramco Systems Ltd. is stepping into a market rife with competition. The application development tools vendor last week launched a suite of packaged enterprise applications and app-development services.

The apps are built on the vendor's VirtualWorks application development platform, which combines existing apps with new functions and rules to develop business processes. Features can be added via the modeling process as needs change. That could be the differentiator Ramco needs to compete successfully.

Ramco Enterprise Series release 4.0 meets industry requirements for process manufacturing, discrete manufacturing, and asset-intensive industries. Ramco is also rolling out apps for retail and services industries that cover human resources, business intelligence, finance, and distribution.

Jim Shepherd, senior VP at AMR Research, says Ramco's innovative platform should appeal to businesses. "The nature of model-based development is that you start with the definition of the business process and build from there," he says. "That isn't the traditional application development approach, which tended to be built from the question of what's the data."

Bemis Co. has employed Ramco developers since 1995 to create custom-developed apps for purchasing, production, planning, maintenance management, scheduling, and more. Bemis is using release 4.0's financial application in some European operations it acquired in the past year and plans to upgrade its custom apps to the packaged suite.

"In the new release, the product can be changed easily without disrupting the overall base product," says Carlos Monssen, Bemis' director of strategic planning for IT. "Also, the use of the browser and eliminating the need for software at the client provides us with more flexibility and productivity in managing the product, upgrades, and changes required as our business changes."