I'm a former IDG employee and I find IDG publications (anything that ends with ...world and a hundred other "books" including CIO magazine) and research (IDC) among the best source of reliable open information on the web. So I was surprised by the confusion in a December 6 cio.com blog post about ERP (I think) that pointed me to a Forbes article about ECM (I think but maybe it's about cloud computing... or maybe it's about social blah blah blah).
Whatever, if you are a CIO or other IT manager or staffer, no harm/no foul. You can sort out the buzzwords and get the point.
But if you are investing in information technology (IT) and don't keep an IT buzzword decoder on your belt, you're probably a little confused by cio.com lumping together IBM, Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL) and SAP in a story that leads off talking about what's wrong with ERP. You're right IBM does not sell ERP software (its partners do). Microsoft, Oracle and SAP all sell ERP but the former make much more money on functionality other than ERP and SAP -- in recently acquiring Sybase -- apparently wants to go that route as well. In fact, the cio.com article really is condemning IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP -- the four largest software providers as measured by revenue on a worldwide basis -- for their legacy-software/services business models.
But the biggest of the four by far, Microsoft (bigger than the other three combined), doesn't really have such a business model. And to the extent that number-two IBM -- depending on whose numbers you use -- has one, it's all tied up with its systems business in one direction and its consulting business in the other. So I'm guessing the writer was just taking the long way around to beat up on SAP and Oracle but didn't want to say that.
Which leads to the Forbes article that cio.com links to. If you are investing in IT, you're probably a little confused by Forbes' post drawing some oddball distinction between cloud computing and enterprise software. You're right, they are not different and they are not comparative... and they are not competitive. Enterprise software of all types -- not just ERP -- runs in the cloud as well as on premise.
The author of the Forbes blog post founded a small company that competes in the enterprise content management (ECM) space with EMC, Alfresco, and a dozen others including -- oh by the way -- IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Apparently the Forbes post author is trying to differentiate his product from market leaders by saying it runs only the cloud. I find that a pretty weak differentiator but, oh by the way, depending on how you define it, IBM and Oracle are probably already two and three (or three and two) in cloud computing as measured by revenue, gaining quickly on salesforce.com (CRM). So its not like those old tired business models that the Forbes author is criticizing is holding the old tired successful leaders of the enterprise software market back any.
-- Dennis Byron
(no financial interest in companies mentioned)
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