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Top ten changes in ERP portfolios

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Preeti
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INDIA: Well, the market and competitive proximity does not exactly qualify as a shopping mall but vendors in this industry are usually wheeling their carts, even if they do not really plan on bringing a new box home. It is definitely too soon to tell if the boxes don't turn into more weights, but some changes in vendor carts do look interesting. They might affect your menu card some day. For now, 2012 brought new name plates for some products, here's a quick list.

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1. HP - Autonomy

Talking of acquisitions can not be complete without the mention of a not-so-good-news for HP. Official announcement timeline notwithstanding, the fate of this cherry-picking attempt really panned out this year. The $11 billion acquisition of EIM Vendor Autonomy burst into dark colours towards the end of 2012.

A series of allegations have now been put forth against Autonomy's management team including a non-cash impairment charge of $8.8 billion related to Autonomy in the fourth quarter of its 2012 fiscal year.

As per what the company's statement reveals: "HP is extremely disappointed to find that some former members of Autonomy's management team used accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company, prior to Autonomy's acquisition by HP. These efforts appear to have been a willful effort to mislead investors and potential buyers, and severely impacted HP management's ability to fairly value Autonomy at the time of the deal."

However, as the company quickly adds to remind, it will remain 100 per cent committed to Autonomy and its industry-leading technology.

2. Oracle - Taleo:

Just when the world was busy watching whether it will end or survive the calendar apocalypse, Oracle announced another new family member.

Prior to this, in February, Oracle moved ahead with its cloud ambitions and announced its intention to acquire Dublin, CA based Taleo for $1.9 billion.

With the addition of a cloud based talent management software provider with 5000 customers and 1400 employees; that provides recruiting and on boarding, performance management and goal setting, compensation, succession, and learning and development; there might be hints of a complete suite in this area.

From what experts see, there are clear advantages as both Taleo and SuccessFactors (now picked by SAP) have been competing with Oracle in this space for some time. Does it mean other HCM and HR Tech names like Ceridian, CornerStone OnDemand, FairSail, Kinexa, UltimateSoftware, and Workday will fill the gaps that still exist in marquee portfolios like Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP? That's what will stir this space in 2013 too it is hoped.

3. More items on Oracle's shopping spree:

That seemed to be the word for the company always famous for its big appetite in this market. This came as the second major acquisition in this "public cloud" space at a price tag of $1.43 billion. Analysts feel that this leads to a pattern showing how Cloud delivery emerges as the predominant option for applications.

Oracle is being subject to many guesstimates and it is expected that Oracle will acquire its way into many other edge applications not listed on its Public Cloud road map like social business solutions, expense management, learning solutions, pricing management, identity management, and mobile device management, as Constellation research underlines.

Multi-tenancy however, remains the key attention spot even now,

This December Oracle set its eyes on another cloud platform. The next addition is Eloqua, a provider of cloud-based modern marketing applications.

This brings in a marketing automation and revenue performance management software in Oracle's bouquet. The combination of Oracle and Eloqua is expected to create a comprehensive Customer Experience Cloud offering to help companies transform the way they market, sell, support and serve their customers.

The combined offering is expected to enable organizations to provide a highly personalized and unified experience across channels, create brand loyalty through social and online interactions, and provide superior service at every touch point.

Cloud continued to be the chief theme at Oracle's acquisition party with the addition of Instantis, a provider of cloud-based and on-premise project portfolio management (PPM) solutions.

By combining Instantis with leading capabilities from Oracle's Primavera and Fusion Applications, Oracle expects to provide the most comprehensive set of cloud-based and on-premise Enterprise Project Portfolio Management solutions allowing customers to plan and execute initiatives throughout their organizations.

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With Vitrue, a cloud-based social marketing and engagement platform, the company also left some footprints in the social media space this year with its acquisition wagon.

Together, Oracle and Vitrue plan to enable a unified social experience across customer interactions, resulting in meaningful customer engagements with consistent brand experiences across all channels and media; improved return on investment for social sales and marketing campaigns across paid, owned and social media; and enhanced customer service through real-time responsiveness and high touch engagement.

Another interesting change was DataRaker, a provider of a cloud-based analytics platform that enables electric, gas and water utilities to leverage vast amounts of data to optimize operational performance and improve customer service.

4. SAP's action

Talking of Oracle one is bound to veer towards another vendor a.s.a.p.

This year marked a major acquisition with Ariba, a cloud-based business commerce network. The thrust towards mobility has already been fine-tuned with Syclo, a provider of enterprise mobile applications and technologies. The addition of Syclo's expertise in building and selling mobile solutions in industries such as utilities, oil & gas, life sciences and manufacturing, is estimated to immediately enhance SAP mobile solutions.

Ticking Syclo's maturity of applications and complementary forces to SAP in key mobile areas such as enterprise asset management (EAM), field services, inventory management and approvals/workflow. As is expected, Syclo apps will be integrated with the SAP mobile platform andSAP Afaria for mobile device management and security.

With over 20 acquisitions since 2007 totaling more than $20 billion, SAP seems to continue in making inroads and becoming equally formidable to its arch rivals when it comes to inorganic growth.

The entry of SuccessFactors "cloud DNA" has been a big pit stop as many analysts see it.

If all goes well as predicted, SAP's HCM software for the on-premise and on-demand worlds, would be married together and "out of the box" integration will be delivered with clear roadmaps. This is what really matters to customers.

Ariba, for instance, that came at a ticket tag of $4.5 billion, is being betted upon to repeat for the

Supplier' hubs, what SuccessFactors did for the HR hub. For existing SAP customers, Ariba is slated to offer five pre-built adapters to ECC Financials + Materials Management; ECC Fin only; ECC MM only; ECC + Supplier Relationship Management; and SRM only as per ASUG watchers.

The Ariba's Collaborative Commerce product is a NetWeaver Compliant Adapter that "connects SAP to the Ariba Commerce Cloud for real-time collaboration with virtually all of your suppliers for B2B commerce, with no need to modify or upgrade your SAP environment."

5. JAM sessions

SAP continues the inorganic route on the roads of enterprise social strategy as well with theSAP Jam social software platform.

StreamWork as well the SuccessFactors Jam product are being rolled into SAP Jam, as some reports point. Jam is being positioned as way to integrate social functionalities (i.e. feeds, status updates, activity streams) into users' enterprise applications and business processes.

This covers integration with SAP CRM (on-premise), the mobile client for SAP Financials OnDemand, several key pieces of SAP Sales OnDemand as well as SuccessFactors' Business Executive Suite.

6. Yammer:

Microsoft would not stand on the side-steps and watch for sure when everyone is trying to make the most of a prolific enterprise social networking market.

It acquired Yammer for $1.2 billion and as Ovum experts highlight : It's not just Microsoft eyeing-up the opportunities afforded by the Facebook-led social paradigm shift. Established enterprise IT vendors, such as IBM, Oracle, Salesforce.com, and SAP, are all busy bringing social capabilities to the workplace via a variety of ways and means.

With existing capabilities as available with SharePoint Server, Microsoft can leap forth with Yammer, a new breed of enterprise collaboration solution, designed from the ground-up to exploit social, mobile, and cloud technologies, and would sit neatly alongside Skype, the communication product that Microsoft acquired this time last year for $8.5billion.

7. Infor's plate:

The slew of inorganic muscle-power build-up continued this year for Infor. What mattered more was how the Lawson acquisition would play out and be leveraged this year. Infor has been pegged as a company that is keen on giving a ‘third-choice' to customers obsesses with SAP, Oracle but as experts feel, it is also a company that is betting on sub-verticals.

It can mean beyond process manufacturing or "food and beverage," but "bakeries" and other sub-columns.

Speculations about overlap between products of the two firms have been set aside and their complementary flavours were trumpeted.

Lawson's stronghold in healthcare-specific offerings with Infor's footholds in strong asset management products would make a good combo.

As to Lawson M3 (formerly, Intentia) too, Infor has claimed strong synergies with its other manufacturing offerings, specifically with its product lifecycle management and supply chain products which many consider as best-of-breed.

Good to see how the last 6 months have seen a series of product and technology releases across the Infor and Lawson platforms.

A long way to go yet.

Like how experts like Frank Scavo from Constellation Research have opined Infor's ambition to become a "third-choice" to SAP and Oracle might be a bit premature.

In its ERP offerings, Infor is still a large collection of independently developed and maintained products. Lawson just adds two more (S3 and M3) to the portfolio, as rightly pointed.

Exploring two-tier configurations, with SAP or Oracle running for corporate or shared-services, with Infor offerings running at the plant or local office level, resonates as another great idea from Scavo.

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No doubt, this December, Infor showed it continues its shopping parade, as it acquired marketing resource management (MRM) vendor Orbis Global. Infor will keep Orbis Global as a stand-alone entity for one year, with Orbis integrated into the larger Infor Epiphany business unit thereafter. Orbis will become a mandatory cross-sell component for the Epiphany sales team.

However, experts feel that to be competitive with leaders like IBM, SAS and Teradata across the broader range of integrated marketing management (IMM) applications, Investing in a more robust MRM solution could help.

For now, Orbis will need to be further integrated with Epiphany's marketing applications at deeper architectural and interface levels for process integration and a consistent user experience. Gartner expects this to take two years to complete, at which point clients of both companies should expect migration to a new architecture and interface.

8. Take it EZ

This year also saw (EZ) Revenue Management Solutions Limited (EasyRMS) sale to Infor.

With the addition of SaaS Revenue and Yield Management solutions to the global hotel industry, that boasts of over 1,200 hotel properties utilizing their solution in 67 countries; this clearly bolsters Infor's pack.

EasyRMS, Co-Founder and CEO, Paul Margaillan had said, "We are very excited about the integration with Infor. This is a big win for our global clients and our team. We really appreciate the guidance and advice we received from John Rovani and his team through our close relationship with The McLean Group."

Easy RMS is a perfect fit to help this happen as Stewart Applbaum, SVP and general manager, hospitality, Infor had cheered at the announcement. He tagged it as perfect complement to Infor, pointing how the cloud-based SaaS strategy fitted nicely into Infor's hospitality product strategy.

9. Metrix weds IFS

Big acquisitions often shadow the not-so-huge ones. But consolidation is happening at many layers and at many levels.

This year also saw IFS, another enterprise applications company, signing an agreement with the owners of Metrix LLC ("Metrix") to purchase 100 per cent of the membership interests. Metrix translates into advanced Mobility & Service Management applications for IFS.

With strong coverage for industries such as Asset & Capital Equipment, Telecommunications, High Tech & Medical Device Manufacturing, Transportation, and Third Party/Outsourced Field Service Operations, as claimed, it can be a good win for IFS.

It would mean configurable and packaged mobile application for the field service market.

It hints at revenue synergies as well by giving IFS the most complete service management offering on the market - from a single vendor.

As reports indicate, IFS now provides both a broader service and project centric ERP solution for asset intensive industries (long life capital equipment), as well as a more customer-centric (contact center, workforce scheduling) solution for high volume service providers.

10. Third-party market hotspot

Third-party maintenance thankfully did not limit itself this year to only litigations and skepticism.

Denver, Colorado based Spinnaker Management acquired competitor Versytec, a company noted as a pioneer to announce third-party maintenance services within a year after PeopleSoft acquired JD Edwards in July 18, 2003.

With an estimated 35 to 40 active 3PM customers, this signals a good portfolio refresh. R Ray Wang, a seasoned CRM industry analyst interprets that as many JD Edwards customers seek alternatives to pricey maintenance fees; and software ownership costs continue to escalate as vendors accelerate their efforts to capture support and maintenance revenues; the market needs more options and choices in the third party maintenance market.

A bulked up Spinnaker only helps as it gives reasonably-postured and viable option to many customers. More so as it has the critical mass to compete with Oracle, as Wang points.

More than that, as Spinnaker Support reportedly offers a different approach to third party maintenance; coupling third party maintenance options with consulting services; there is a one-stop shop advantage in the offing.

Removing third-party maintenance as an option for their customers may not be as easy as some vendors might hope. Will joining of small forces create a big threat and a big alternative for vendors as customers respectively, only the next year can tell.

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