Midrange ERP June 2k

[MacWheel99@xxxxxxx]

I just got the annual buyers's guide issue of Midrange ERP Magazine which has 
some statistics of interest to 
a) BPCS_L on the alleged health of SSA
b) Midrange_L on markets for AS/400 RPG programmers

SSA apparently did not update this year's questionairre from 
http://www.mfg-erp.com
but some data has changed from last year, so they got data from somewhere.  # 
of installed sites for BPCS is down to 12,000 of which 20% are midrange, 
defined as Unix & AS/400 ... the Windows NT & PC/Windows boxes are not 
checked ... the Oracle & DB2 boxes are checked (Oracle is a surprise to me) 
100% of the boxes associated with various ERP capabilities are checked. 

There's 250-300 ERP products for the midrange in this ERP buyer's guide ... 
when measured by # of alleged installed sites, last year at 18,000 BPCS was 
in 2nd place, but in this year's buyer's guide has dropped to tied for 6th 
place, unless I missed a relevant hit in this small print, also at 12,000 
with Baan, behind 
Sage MAS 70,000 which only supports MRP II & Supply Chain & DRP & e-commerce 
& financials (not full ERP like front office MES quality engineering although 
I do not understand how you can do MRP II without engineering & I will need 
to check the definitions on how front office is different from financials),
SAP 22,000 which supports all areas of ERP,
Jet Form 20,000 which only supports MRP II & Supply Chain & e-commerce & data 
collection & flow mfg & ASP (not full ERP like inventory financials & quality 
although I do not understand how you can do MRP II with no inventory)
Forecast Pro 18,000 which does Forecasting only (not full ERP),
Macola Progression 17,000 which supports just over 1/2 of ERP areas (no 
forecasting engineering maintenance configurator quality warehouse 
management).

Market share is only one indicator.  Financial health is more important, 
making the leaders J-BOPS: JD Edwards, Baan, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP.

On the issue of the shifting fortunes of IT professionals seeking gainful 
employment supporting companies implementing this stuff or making 
improvements to it ...

Gartner indicates 90% of Fortune 500 companies have purchased modules from 
ERP vendors but fewer than 20% have gone live.  In the mid sized companies, 
more than half are using legacy products & have not yet selected a 
next-generation ERP system (there is a school of thought that it might be 
stupid to do so).  The biggest problem for the midrange ERP vendors is that 
they are being encroached upon both by the vendors for the larger sized 
customers and by the vendors for the smaller, which other problems including 
implementing e-commerce & broadening the application base.  I am giving just 
the barest summary here - you need to check out the June 2000 issue of 
Midrange ERP Magazine.

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
http://www.cen-elec.com MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor
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