The return of Big ERP?

As Shepherd as well points out, some of the improvement in enterprise software earnings is the result of pent-up demand: a large number of businesses have spent very little over the last two years. Now he as well expects the ERP market to return to the steady, eight to 10 per cent annual growth it enjoyed previously the financial crisis.

There are caveats, clearly. Businesses in North America, where Shepherd is based, have tended to invest more per employee, and often a higher percentage of turnover, in IT than their counterparts in the UK. And there are more alternatives to ERP but than there were a few years ago. Oracle and SAP both have their cloud computing strategies, however face growing competition from cloud specialists, just as NetSuite and companies that are using Salesforce's Force.com platform to develop ERP systems.

The big two

Buyers of enterprise research will welcome any competition to the "big two": in 2008, Oracle and SAP held a combined share of the ERP market of more than 65 per cent, again according to Gartner. Nevertheless - to the extent that a healthy ERP market represents a healthier IT industry and a healthier manufacturing sector - improved results from both software giants should be welcomed.

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