David Hope, managing director at Intentia Asia-Pacific, noted 'the significant opportunity' to offer his company's services to the medium-sized enterprise customers of JD Edwards because of upheavals typically caused by mergers.

Oracle, for instance, has extended its unsolicited purchase offer to PeopleSoft shareholders until September 19. In response, PeopleSoft has filed an amended complaint against Oracle. PeopleSoft has also received shareholder lawsuits, mainly against its response to the Oracle offer.

Research firm Gartner has said the PeopleSoft lawsuit showed concern that Oracle's bid will disrupt the company's business and its merger with JD Edwards. In Asia, the focus of rivals' attention has been on about 150 JD Edwards customers in China.

Intentia and IFS are offering concessions to firms that plan to or use JD Edwards applications.

Michael Nordin, a regional president at IFS, said: 'We're confident our component technology will allow us to get JD Edwards customers up and running quickly and cost-effectively without disrupting business operations.'

Mr Hope said Intentia has set up JD Edwards Conversion Labs worldwide, designed to help clients migrate to Intentia.

SAP has struck a partnership with IBM to help deliver its software to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In June it introduced SAP Internet Sales, a system designed to speed up SMEs' business-automation efforts.

Oracle Asia-Pacific executive vice-president Derek Williams said: 'We're also continuing our strategy in the mid-market with the Special Edition of our e-business suite and we expect to lead this market.'

The market counts about 400 mid-market business applications users in the region.

Market leader SAP competes with Oracle and PeopleSoft in selling enterprise resource planning, supply chain management or customer relationship management applications to large enterprises.

Companies such as JD Edwards, Intentia, IFS and QAD mainly sell their business-automation software to medium-sized and smaller enterprises, which make up most of the businesses in Asia-Pacific.

Unfazed by the increased competition, JD Edwards has announced its first product update as part of PeopleSoft. Its Order Promising and Production and Distribution Planning software, part of the JD Edwards 5 family of products, became more available this month.

Tim Minahan, vice-president at technology consulting firm Aberdeen Group, said: 'Bringing the two companies together organisationally, culturally and technically will be a greater challenge. It will be several years before it is apparent if the companies will successfully complete this task.'

Gartner has predicted that JD Edwards' merger with PeopleSoft will generate about US$54 million annually in application software licences in the region. PeopleSoft and JD Edwards' combined customer sites number nearly 2,000 in the region.