Tech-friendlier climate cited NEW YORK – Midlevel ERP (enterprise resource planning) software vendor SSA Global Technologies Inc. filed Friday to raise up $200 million in an IPO (initial public offering) of its stock, adding another name to the list of software companies hoping to take advantage of a new, tech-friendlier climate on Wall Street.Meanwhile, one of the first software companies to get in line for an offering, Salesforce.com Inc., said Friday it stopped plans to go public last month after The New York Times published a feature story based on a day-long interview with Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff. San Francisco-based Salesforce.com still plans to go public after an unspecified “cooling off” period, though it acknowledged in a new amendment to its regulatory filing that it risks charges it violated securities laws intended to prevent executives from hyping their companies before an IPO.“If our involvement (in the article) or such activities were held by a court to be in violation of the Securities Act, we could be required to repurchase the shares sold to purchasers in this offering at the original purchase price for a period of one year following the date of the violation,” the company wrote. “We would contest vigorously any claim that a violation of the Securities Act occurred.” More than a dozen tech companies have filed for IPOs this year, which is on track to feature more companies going public than any year since the late 1990s. One factor in that upswing is the growing maturity of companies that weathered the post-dot-com shakeout, according to David Menlow, president of the Millburn, New Jersey-based IPO Financial Network Corp.“What’s evident about the stocks that are coming to market now is that they are companies that are growing, that had their peak year of losses in 2000 or 2001, and have managed to reduce those losses. That’s a different profile than what was going around in the boom cycle,” Menlow said. “Investors are ready to put their feet back in the water again.”Chicago-based SSA Global turned a profit of $51.9 million last year on revenue of $297.4 million. The company, which picked up the assets of ailing ERP maker Baan last July, is among those Oracle Corp. cites as an increasingly strong competitor in its antitrust argument with the U.S. Department of Justice. SSA Global’s IPO is underwritten by Goldman Sachs & Co. and Credit Suisse First Boston LLC. The company intends to use proceeds from its IPO to repay debt and for general corporate purposes.Other tech companies keeping SSA Global company in the IPO pipeline include customer service ASP (application service provider) RightNow Technologies Inc., analytics service provider WebSideStory Inc., Lindows Inc. and, of course, Google Inc., which plans to raise as much as $2.7 billion.Salesforce.com, which filed in December for its IPO, is likely to be the first to complete its offering — if the outspoken Benioff can keep quiet long enough. Software Development