And, while the anti-trust harbingers won out at the lower end by disallowing the attempted purchase of SME accounting software house Intuit, they must have been looking in the other direction when the monolith snapped up high-end ERP vendor, Great Plains, for a cool US$1.1 billion in January, 2001.
However, it would appear you need more than a popular desktop suite to steal the show at the top end of the market -- where the once separate areas of ERP, CRM, Financial, Human Resources and accounting software have bled around the edges.
Betraying what appears to be a long-forgotten calling as a surgeon, PeopleSoft's director of product and industry marketing in Asia, Ray Kloss, conjures a wholly visceral metaphor for the market.
-Before we used to replace a spleen," he says. -But now we are replacing the whole digestive systemn -- stomach, spleen and all."
According to Kloss, the Internet boom resulted in an excess in expenditure on customer-facing systems, while back-office requirements were put on hold. He says the market is now interested not just in repeating the overhaul of their system carried out just in time for Y2K, but also in seeing tangible improvements to functionality.
-This concept of real-time information has become one of the most important sales drivers," Kloss says. -People are no longer interested in running their business on yesterday's information, they want to be able to respond to changes in the market place immediately, not like the old data warehouse days."
Working with the web
It would appear that the present rule regarding Web services, even at the high end, is make sure it is available -- but don't expect anyone to use it.
Oracle Australia's director of enterprise solutions, Scott Dawes, says while interest in Web services is increasing, it is certainly not foremost in the minds of enterprise technology buyers.
-Companies already spent a large portion of their budget on Web-facing technology," Dawes says. -We don't expect the next phase of the technology in terms of Web services to really pick up until about 2005."
In a similar vein, Dawes sees a healthy future of Application Service Provider (ASP) services in this space, as long as bandwidth issues can be overcome.
-The security issue regarding ASP model is a bit of a red herring, it is more that IT departments are paranoid about losing their jobs," Dawes says. -If you ask the CEO about the business decision regarding ASP type solutions, you will get a very different answer."
Accpac International Senior Vice President Daithi Holden points out that like all modes of delivery, the ASP model is appropriate to certain types of business, but shouldn't be pushed onto companied that are not prepared.
-People that are already running a significant proportion of the business on the Web are comfortable with the idea of having their information hosted elsewhere," Holden says.
Holden went on to say that many of the enterprises adopting ASP-based systems are focussed on rapid expansion, and investigating different ways to achieve such growth.
-With an ASP model, they can expand rapidly without needing to bulk up their in house support very much," Holden says.
And while the investment in Web-based technology appeared not to pay-off in the short term, Kloss says it is fundamental to the way software currently operates.
-Our whole application is deployed through a portal which allows us to deliver a lot more functionality out to the individual employees," Kloss says. -Up until recently the return on investment for accounting software has been mostly strategic, but if people within the company have access to real time data that allows them to make decisions based on high quality data."
Kloss says the improvements in data access, coupled with increasing levels of integration between applications will actually lead to direct return on software investment.
In the mean time however, Dawes believes more tightly integrated suites of enterprise tools will trickle down to the mid sector, leading to an increased presence in this area.
-Accounting software is increasingly becoming the centre point of data for a range of business applications," Dawes says. -And that process of integration is just set to continue."
Part 1 of this series explores the offerings available to the SME and small business market.
