The traditional global enterprise market—ERP, supply chain management (SCM), supply management, product lifecycle management (PLM), human capital management (HCM), and customer relationship management (CRM)—experienced 2007-2008 year over year growth in total revenue between 4% and 9%, with the exception of the PLM segment. The PLM segment saw a total decline of -2%, which gives a hint of what is to come for the broader market segments in 2009.

There is no doubt, now more than ever, the decline in the global economy will have its greatest impact on the enterprise application software market in 2009. Given the uncertainty in the recovery, AMR Research has taken a new approach in providing the five-year forecast based around three different recovery scenarios: baseline, fast economic recovery, and weak economic recovery.

SAP and Oracle continue to dominate the markets, and the effect of their revenue cannot be denied across most of the segments. Additionally, favorable currency conversion by many of the European companies lifted some of the year-over-year growth. The PLM segment is the only one not dominated by SAP or Oracle, and therefore felt the drag by CAD-rich vendors directly involved in the consumer electronics and semiconductor industries. As automotive and high tech continue to struggle, we expect this drag to reach well into 2009.

The ERP, SCM, supply management, HCM, and CRM segments are not insulated from the overall downturn. AMR Research expects declines between -2% and -6% for each of these sectors based on budget lockdowns and the general reluctance by corporations to spend. New license sales will be especially challenging.

The future is not all doom and gloom, though. We see several nuggets of opportunity for software vendors:

• AMR Research defines subscription revenue to include pricing models outside of traditional licensing agreements. Software as a service (SaaS) and cloud computing will be used throughout this Report. Regardless of what you want to call it, these models continue to grow at a faster rate over traditional licensing because they are quicker, easier, and cheaper to deploy. All of these are attractive traits, especially during recessionary times.
• The small and midsize business (SMB) market continues to be an attractive long-term growth opportunity segment, intensifying competition among the top ERP vendors.
• With respect to supply chain, global trade management continues to be fueled by regulatory, security, and compliance requirements. Order fulfillment is driven by companies’ desires to manage their inventories in the face of shrinking and shifting demand.
• Workforce management has become incredibly valuable in this difficult economic time, both for improving the efficiency of resources, whether it is a retail, manufacturing, or distribution environment, or in managing contingent workforces.
• Procurement applications directly affect stakeholder’s budgets, purchase workflows, and working capital. When they are tied with financial settlement, companies are finding even greater opportunity to accelerate working capital.

The global enterprise market top 50

This year AMR Research has combined its analysis of the six traditional markets in to one Report, broken down by chapters for each application space. We have compiled a list of top 50 vendors in order of revenue influencing the space. Naturally many of the smaller-revenue vendors continue to innovate and influence and are discussed in the full Report.

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