From Santa Barbara comes news that QAD, Inc., which sells enterprise software and services for global manufacturing companies, announced that technology analyst, Aberdeen (News - Alert) Group, will share why cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) is gaining momentum, in a keynote address at an upcoming QAD event in San Antonio.

“This is an exciting time for manufacturers,” QAD officials said in making the announcement, adding that as one of several presentations on the latest trends in ERP, Aberdeen Group Research Director, Kevin Prouty, “will share primary research that suggests customers are increasingly willing to consider ERP delivered in a Software as a Service (SaaS (News - Alert)) model, also known as cloud ERP.

Gordon Fleming, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for QAD, will jointly present how QAD Enterprise Applications On Demand is gaining in popularity among QAD customers as a full ERP suite deployed On Demand, On Premise, or as a hybrid model.

Fleming said their customers “have undergone many changes in the last two years.”

Also this week, TMC (News - Alert) reported, that QAD customer Dacor, a manufacturer of kitchen appliances made in the USA, was selected as a 2011 Progressive Manufacturing 100 (PM 100) award winner in the Data and Integration Mastery category.

Sponsored by industry publisher Manufacturing Enterprise Communications (News - Alert), the PM 100 industry awards program honors 100 manufacturing companies from around the world for their successful completion of projects using information technology to transform their business and deliver demonstrable competitive advantages.

“Dacor was selected over hundreds of nominees for improving its manufacturing, supply chain and IT efficiency while reducing costs and bringing new products to market, faster, using QAD On Demand -- QAD's cloud ERP delivered in a Software as a Service (SaaS) model,” company officials said at the time.