From bankruptcy to Chicago's biggest software firm SSA was boosted by the Internet and revived by new CEO and

SSA Global Technologies Inc. was launched in Chicago 22 years ago,and it's here that its current owners plan to nurture it.

Roger Covey, a self-described "gearhead," who had a computerscience degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,started System Software Associates -- known as SSA for short -- in1981 to build and sell software to help automate all aspects ofbusiness, from production to distribution to financial information.SSA was a pioneer in material resource planning software, today knownas enterprise resource planning.

The Internet gave SSA a boost because its "open systems" approachenabled SSA's customers to use its powerful Business Planning …