It’s Shaping up to be a "Banner" Year for ERP!
Happy New Year everyone from those of us here at The Edge, we’re just getting back into the swing of things this week as we empty out our email inboxes from our holiday breaks—but never fear, with the big National Retail Federation show starting next week, you’ll be hearing a lot from us soon. In the meantime, I was scrolling through my holiday messages and came across a note on a new study published in Infoworld predicting a “banner” year for ERP in 2010. Chris Kanaracus, one of the primary reporters at IDG, has an interesting perspective on the ERP market in 2009 and how emerging trends and product launches will play a large role in 2010. The article discusses the global recession’s impact on the ERP market in 2009 and how, with spending starting to rise, vendors will need to fight hard in 2010 for every available dollar. Chris also predicts how free and open-source ERP vendors having strong growth in the year ahead and notes vendors will also focus on buying companies that extend their vertical expertise. Along with some mumbo jumbo about other non-noteworthy ERP vendors (kidding), Microsoft Dynamics ERP is one of the key focus areas of the IDG article. Microsoft Dynamics is referenced as being ‘a significant player in the SMB space’, extending its vertical portfolio and keeping pace with its SaaS ERP strategy by announcing a series of on-demand extensions in 2009. 451 Group analyst China Martins also gave a positive nod to Microsoft Dynamics in 2009/2010: "Microsoft is becoming more aggressive about its ambition to be the mid-market ERP leader by a clearer margin and is keen to attract new customers, whether migrating off older third-party apps or looking to move up from Intuit's QuickBooks.” Whether it’s the industry acquisitions, the S+S momentum, or the upcoming NRF show, we couldn’t be more excited about what’s on tap for 2010! Hope to see many of you in New York next week— Guy
