Tag Archives: strategy

ERP Software Vendor Metrics – What Matters?

With acquisitions in the air again, how do you tell if an ERP vendor is performing well? For example Lawson is performing well by many accounts, but received an unsolicited takeover bid anyway. Some suggest the cost of shifting to … Continue reading

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Vendor Margins and the Cloud

It’s all cloud all day in the buzz about the software business, and that definitely includes ERP software. With conventional wisdom pointing to a need for purpose written cloud software (multi-tenant architectures etc.), it is no surprise that on the … Continue reading

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Cloud not Cheaper than On Premesis

As the cloud reality replaces the hype machine, sober analysis of costs and benefits is becoming available. Chris Chiappinelli sums it up nicely: A few years ago, there was a rampant assumption that software delivered via cloud computing was automatically … Continue reading

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Optimizing Dynamics for the Stack

Microsoft’s latest investment in Dynamics is aimed at developers, not business users. The focus is independent software vendors (ISVs) which build vertical ERPs using Dynamics as a base. The new version, now code-named Microsoft Dynamics AX 6, should reduce the … Continue reading

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Leader of the Stack

A very interesting post from Josh Greenbaum of ematters frames the ongoing ERP market in terms of the “stack”, the hardware, operating systems, databases, development kits an so on that are behind the curtain of any ERP software product. So, … Continue reading

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Are you ready for some takeovers?

Life in the ERP software business is about to get interesting once again as Infor hires a new CEO. Charles Phillips moves from Oracle to Infor where he is expected to restart the acquisition machine (more than 70 since 2002) … Continue reading

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Software Quality Defined: Build What Your Customers Need

InformationWeek reports Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst’s condemnation of the software industry. Whitehurst catalogs a long list of industry ills including overpricing, a lack of productivity improvement in development organizations, and unimproved quantities of program bugs in commercial software. The … Continue reading

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The 70’s are Back

Ray Wang analyzes the enterprise technology market at his Software Insiders blog. He compares Oracle’s acquisition of Sun to IBM in the 1970s. The impact — the tech industry reverts back to the beginning of a 40 year innovation cycle. … Continue reading

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Time to Stock up on Popcorn

This will be fun to watch, at least if you are not a customer of these behemoths (then antacids may be more appropriate). Larry Ellison launched a new verbal war against anything but Oracle as the big technology firms crank … Continue reading

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Engaging Customers

Ned Lilly offers several ways for software vendors to engage open source communities, including good ideas like transparency, bring in customers early in the process, plus open and continued communication. All are good ideas, but Ned commits an error of … Continue reading

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