The Evolving ERP Stacks

Call it forced coming together or natural coming together - be it a private equity play like in the case of Hummingbird or the case of consolidator acquiring another consolidator, or the adventurous moves of oracle, all clearly show the arrival of a new ERP market place.

When the Infor acquisition of SSA global was announced, I wrote that as I see it, some good products are there in this new stable - besides Baan, Ephiphany, BPCS, Datastream, Brainweb and a few more products are well known in the marketplace with satisfied customers. It is going be a critical thing to watch in terms of what level of support and growth gets provided for the variety of products rolled up as part of this acquisition. No doubt this is an architect's nightmare to bring all these as part of a homogeneous platform - which Infor will have to work towards to leverage the strengths - in the interim they may be supported as standalone products. Infor may also choose to keep a few as part of their enterprise but still available as standalone best-in-class. Its interesting and challenging journey ahead. Just guessing what could be running in the minds of the 30,000 plus customers of the so-many-acquired, integrated-to-be-integrated and superconsolidated software products. To give a visual perspective and an understanding of the complexity look at the ERP Graveyard and to get a full view of the way the stacks are getting build, see this excellent chart. No doubt, interesting times ahead for the enteprise software market itself.