SAP consolidated its position, with close to 500 new customers, including 260 enterprises across verticals, the rest being SMBs. Traditional weakness in telecom started getting addressed as it bagged new accounts like Reliance Communications and Aktel in Bangladesh. Retail (Provogue, Khazana, and Reliance Retail), construction (Oberoi Constructions, K Raheja, and Hiranandani), and airlines (Kingfisher Airlines and IndiGo) were the sunshine sectors where it made inroads.

Total Business Applications Market Company Revenue (Rs crore) ERP 1,056 SCM 469 CRM 689 Middleware 260 RDBMS 1,078 BI 531 Productivity Suites 550 Graphic Tools 560 Engineering Tools 450 Vertical Applications 1,250 Others 200 Total Market 7,093
Source: DQ estimate CyberMedia Research
Core banking constitutes a major part of vertical apps. Indian companies are strong players here

SAPs two tier structure of distribution and implementation partners paid offwhile IBM (new signing), HP, eSys, and Wipro Infotech helped address the enterprises, the likes of OBTGlobal, Spectrasoft, and Seal Infotech took care of the mid-market organizations. The New ERP 2500 rebuilt on the Netweaver platform was launched during the year; it heralded the beginning of the shift from ERP to SOA. Clearly, SAP was trying to build a passage to shift its customers to ESOA, not just as a new technology but as a different business process platform.

Oracles #2 position was sealed, courtesy its license renewal with few marquee customers and new wins like LG, Maruti Udyog, and Cummins India among others. Like SAP, Oracle too looked at making ERP available on its open standards based SOA; Godfrey Phillips India, Indias second largest tobacco company decided to automate and integrate its internal business processes by this technology.

That Oracle not only countered the SAP domination, but carved out and expanded its own turf was a testimony to its success in not just acquiring other vendors, but in managing multiple brands in a maturing market. While both the PeopleSoft and Siebel brands were maintained, Oracle took over the provision of customer support for and development of India-specific features in its JD Edwards EnterpriseOne applications. This move reflected Oracles increased focused on the JD Edwards customer base in India, especially in light of SAPs move to woo JDE and PeopleSoft customers.

In fact, customer win backs was a common phenomenon during 2006-07; it was a scenario of mutual quid pro quid between the two protagonists in the ERP drama. While MRF Tyres, JK Tyres, and Godrej Industries were SAPs competitive winbacks from Oracle (it won back Havells from Infor), the latter returned the compliments by winning Tata Motors and ITC back from SAP.

Indian SCM Market Company Revenue (Rs crore) SAP 184 Oracle 94 SSA Global (Infor) 48 Take Solutions 20 Microsoft 18 3i Infotech 16 Ramco 14 Intentia 11 QAD 9 i2 5 Others 50 Total 469
Source: DQ estimate CyberMedia Research
The complex product life-cycle of an automobile with thousands of suppliers and sub-contractors necessitated SCM deployment.

The SMBs turned out to be the ultimate objects of desire; they were courted aggressively by all ERP vendors, biggies, and others alike, though each tasted varying success. The likes of SAP and Oracle seemed to have bagged the maximum attention: SAP acquired more than 200 mid-market customers that included the likes of Kajaria Tiles, Greenply, Century Ply, Rupa, Sa Re Ga Ma, and Tata Sky; Oracle bagged the likes of Sonic Biochem (Indore), Auto Clutches (Goa), Noble Grains (Jaipur), Indian Copper Complex, Apex Auto (Bhubaneswar), CMA CGM Logistics Park (Lucknow), and Bihar Education Project in Muzaffarpur. This also showed their expansion into B&C class cities.

Even Microsoft with its Dynamics range of ERP solutions made strong forays into the SMB space. Thanks to the 500 customers it bagged (included the likes of Vishal Megamart) during 2006-07, Microsoft could climb to fourth in the ERP pecking order. Not just in business terms, recognition also came in the form of Microsoft being awarded the Frost & Sullivan Growth Strategy Leadership Award for Mid Market ERP in 2006.

SCM: Another Duopoly Regime
Like ERP, this was another market marked by the duopoly of SAP and Oracle; together, they garnered 60% of the market, leaving other vendors to fight out for their niche individual turfs. One reason for this domination could have been the large sizes of deals inked by the likes of Maruti Udyog and Tata Motors; it was not possible for the smaller players to handle deals of such magnitude. Baans traditional presence in manufacturing helped its new avatar Infor to at least secure the third position, though it too lost on not only new accounts, but existing clients like Havells switched allegiance to SAP.

As market technology shifted and SCM product offerings matured at the same time, the user enterprises during 2006-07 sought a better price/performance ratio. A key requirement in achieving a higher ratio was vertical-specific software patterns. Again the biggies like SAP and Oracle scored on this front, as the likes of Take Solutions, Intentia or QAD lacked the wherewithal to achieve multi-vertical expertise.

Page(s)   1  2  3  4