10 main ERP forecasts for 2011

In the quiet market of software for resource management of the enterprise 2010 was issued really unexpected: drama legal claims to the largest companies, the impressive and unexpected growth of new delivery patterns, staff movements and significant absorption – all this will have a long-term impact on the software market.

Experts of cio.com predict that in 2011 further destruction of the "status quo" which developed in an ERP segment will continue, and clients are waited by all new disappointments in traditional model of deployment of ERP systems. While, apparently, models of deliveries and licensing should become simpler, the situation, on the contrary, becomes more and more tangled first of all for business users.

Proceeding from it analysts of the edition prepared descriptions of 10 main trends which will influence the ERP market next year:

ERP clients will become more legible

Business, including large enterprises, actively reinterpret traditional, monumental and expensive approaches to implementation of ERP systems. Reports of Aberdeen Group Inc and Forrester demonstrate that vendors of ERP and in "cloud" receive by the SaaS model a large amount of attention from perspective clients is unpredictable. Business will come to understanding that to traditional ERP approach there are many viable alternatives and will pass to their active practical application.

On-Premise and SaaS of the ERP system will coexist in "cloud"

Chief information officers want to have as little as possible resources today: it is less hardware and the software, less headache from the infrastructure systems there are less costs. The general rate on "cloud" will decline more and more number of traditional vendors for benefit of this model, more and more companies will also select location modes of the ERP of data out of office walls.

Large failures of ERP projects will not manage to be avoided

While top managers and project teams which receives deployment of ERP systems, do not realize the importance of the thought-over and managed approach to implementation of changes, 2011 will be complete of loud ERP failures, as well as all previous years to it. Therefore should not surprise professionals that business users still do not want to use software if they explained them its advantages not enough and motivated them. The lack of change management is main "murderer" of ERP projects. The companies which are not wishing to recognize it will step on a rake of the predecessors.

Oracle Fusion Apps will be "out of work"

The new Oracle platform for automation of the Oracle Fusion Applications Suite enterprises will move ahead on the market very slowly: according to the last research Computer Economics, only 10% of clients of corporation at the moment are going to migrate for this platform. The problem consists that most of clients of "heavy" solutions of Oracle are at the moment too sated and exhausted by the previous projects to begin new.

SAP Business ByDesign: warm welcome and good perspectives

Otherwise the situation with a packet of ERP applications of on-demand SAP Business ByDesign is. The packet was released in the summer of this year, received good reviews and still is with clients in a stage of "honeymoon". Financial achievements of SAP in an op-premise segment of applications will be consolidated, especially at the expense of mid-size companies for which applications "on demand" are also efficient means of economy. SAP Business ByDesign in 2011 waits for take-off.

Licensing of ERP: the confusion will increase

Hybrid implementations, public and private "clouds", SaaS and on-demand systems: emergence of all these IT models only complicated decision-making to the specific manager who needs to select that is the most profitable to his specific company. According to experts of IDC, it can lead to emergence of a new class of managers - Economist CIO (or the economist the Chief information officer) which will perfectly understand artful designs of license schemes. Especially attentively it is necessary to read a small print in agreements with "cloud" providers. The unfavourable forecast consists that a part of IT managers after all will burn on financial side of a question and it will cost them places.

Mediocre ERP vendors will be driven out of the market

Vendors of ERP systems of average scale, under the proposing solutions of on-premise, will be under pressure because of promoting of the SaaS and on-demand models among the companies of medium and small business and also because of strategy implementation of megavendors on penetration into a segment of medium-sized companies. One of such vendors, for example, is Infor with turnover $2 billion servicing medium business. Such companies should make considerable efforts to differentiate the offers and if to them it is not possible – to abandon the market eventually.

Mobile ERP madness

To all appearances the mobility and support of mobile platforms will become one of the main technology trends in the ERP market next year. So, Bill McDermott and Jim Hagermann

Vendors will try to give to ERP systems "relevance"

As ERP is not the most relevant type of business applications now, and at the peak of demand there are analytical tools and BI, many vendors will try "refresh" the ERP solutions due to inclusion of functionality of BI in them. In general their concept and a task sound is promising: make information of the ERP system which was more structured and easily available. However, it is worth being careful with a tendency to "socialization" of ERP as in practice she promises nothing good as, for example, integration of ERP into Facebook.com.

Support of ERP from the third firms will become more popular

Process between Oracle and SAP which principal object is the dispute on legitimacy of activity of the third-party company which was engaged in a customer support of Oracle drew attention to this type of service of ERP systems. However, even earlier world recession forced IT managers to consider models of maintenance of the implemented systems from the third companies as more profitable in the financial plan. This trend will accrue as more and more clients of megavendors show discontent with quality of the support which is officially provided to them. Obviously, Oracle and SAP should work seriously with this problem in the next a year and a half and also to review the price policy in the field of support.