In April 2007 Solarsoft was formed following the merger of CMS Software and XKO Software, two mid-tier ERP software providers. The combined development efforts and resulting products will be marketed under the Solarsoft name. Marlin Equity Partners was the private equity company orchestrating the CMS/XKO merger.
CMS, based in Ontario, Canada, specializes in ERP for small to mid size manufacturers. The CMS customer base was located primarily in North America. The majority of CMS customers run the software on System i, iSeries, or AS/400 servers. CMS products were formerly known as CMS/400, then CMS/i5, and now as iVP. The same software that CMS ported to Windows, and which was formerly known as CMS m5, is branded now as mVP. XKO Software, based in the United Kingdom, and specializes in supply chain and distribution management software for small to mid size businesses in Europe. The software runs on Unix servers and is branded as xVP.