The Enterprise System Spectator

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Gartner retires mid-market ERP magic quadrant

A Spectator reader alerted me to a recent decision by Gartner to discontinue its "magic quadrant" for mid-market ERP. Gartner's magic quadrants are a way to graphically display competing IT products in terms of the vendor's completeness of vision versus its ability to execute. Gartner has over 150 of them.

In attending vendor presentations, I am always amused by the fact that the vendor always seems to be able to find one magic quadrant that puts his product in the most favorable position.

Now it seems that Gartner is retiring its magic quadrant for ERP Midmarket Manufacturing. My source, who works for one of these vendors, says that as a result of consolidation there are not enough vendors left in midmarket ERP to populate the quadrant.

Related posts
Software vendor consolidation and buyer concerns

by Frank Scavo, 1/04/2007 09:12:00 AM | permalink | e-mail this!

 Reader Comments:

This seems a little short sighted on Gartners part. I find it hard to beleive there aren't some viable midmarket options to the behemoths of Oracle and SAP. But at the same time PeopleSoft went to great pains to make the case that Oracle's aqqusition was anti-competitive. Now that the dust has settled what do you think?

posted by  Jim | 6:07 AM, January 14, 2007 | link to this comment

 

I think that vendor consolidation is just a symptom of the fact that it is difficult to make money using the traditional software license model. Economies of scale are about the only lever to pull to make it work at all--hence the trend toward large vendors.

Concerning anti-competition, I don't see any signs that enterprise software pricing has increased generally since the Oracle takeover of PeopleSoft. Oracle and SAP are still locked in a fierce battle for market share, and neither party has the power to increase pricing unilaterally. It would be interesting, though, to see if anyone has done a study to identify the trend in ERP pricing since the takeover.

posted by  Frank Scavo | 9:56 AM, January 14, 2007 | link to this comment

 

We are a mid market co surveying the market right now and we don't feel like we have many options. WE manufacture, sell and rent construction eqt. We have looked at a few ERP systems but are having trouble finding a rental POS system on the front end.
Any thoughts? Thanks

posted by  DK | 8:37 PM, January 17, 2007 | link to this comment

 

Its funny how people live and die by Gartner's quadrant. very simlarly as the srticle says, for every report from Gartner that talks negative about a vendor's product there will always be another article from another Gartner writer talking great about the same product.

posted by  Anonymous | 10:56 AM, January 19, 2007 | link to this comment

 

I represent an ERP solution provider with mid-market focus. We have a solution that fits the needs of DK (Manufacture, sell & rental). Please contact me to discuss the functional requirements.

posted by  Matt K | 9:19 AM, February 22, 2008 | link to this comment

 

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