Troy, Mich.—Jan. 15, 2013—Following recent investments from Francisco Partners and Accel Partners, cloud-based ERP solutions provider Plex Systems appointed Jason Blessing as Chief Executive Officer. He will direct the expansion of Plex Systems as the company continues to invest in its expanding sales force and its award-winning “shop floor to top floor” technology for ERP, manufacturing execution, quality management, supply chain management and business intelligence.
“With its recent $30 million investment from Accel and by naming Jason Blessing as its CEO, Plex Systems is showing a continuing commitment to driving cloud technology in manufacturing organizations,” said Nick Castellina, Enterprise Applications Research Analyst at Aberdeen. “Aberdeen’s research indicates growing acceptance of cloud ERP in manufacturing, and Plex Online is positioned to meet those needs.”
Blessing joins Plex Systems from Oracle, where he was Senior Vice President of Application Development. Previously, he held a variety of executive roles at Taleo, which was acquired by Oracle last year. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Blessing also held a variety of executive positions at PeopleSoft and Price Waterhouse during his 20-year career in enterprise software.
“Manufacturing ERP is by far, the most complex enterprise software to design and build,” said Blessing. “Plex Systems is the first company to build a cloud-based manufacturing ERP solution and has a significant lead over its competitors in this space. The company has built the most complete cloud offering for manufacturing at precisely the time when manufacturers have become comfortable moving this critical component of their business to the cloud.”
Aberdeen further cited that while trends in cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) ERP adoption more than doubled since 2009, trends in the adoption of on-premise solutions decreased by more than 25 percent.
“Francisco Partners acquired Plex Systems last year on the belief that there is a long-term, value creation opportunity in cloud-based ERP—and we expect a greater percentage of the ERP market to move to SaaS offerings like those offered by Plex Systems,” said Petri Oksanen, Principal, Francisco Partners. “Jason brings a tremendous breadth and depth of operational expertise that will accelerate Plex Systems’ product development and business growth. His experience in scaling cloud solutions like Taleo and his years with PeopleSoft and Oracle make him the ideal leader to guide the existing management team and take Plex Systems to the next level.”
