Magic Quadrant for Midmarket and Tier 2-Oriented ERP for Product-Centric Companies

June 4, 2009 from Gartner via Epicor – “Despite the mergers and acquisitions, there are many ERP offerings for midmarket companies and firms deploying Tier 2 ERP systems. This Magic Quadrant evaluates products that have a global presence and are specifically tailored for product-centric midmarket companies with roughly 100 to 1,000 employees…”

180 View – The Gartner Magic Quadrant has been around for many years and I suspect was and still is a big factor in which systems have been selected especially by larger organizations. There is a lot of useful information in the article. You will also find Gartner acts as a judge in assessing strengths and weaknesses of the various systems including getting feedback from “reference” clients. However, we question whether the feedback from clients can be relied upon. Gartner would need a large sample of clients to draw any conclusions. I did a scan through the report looking for information on how many customers were interviewed and how the customers were obtained – I did not find anything.

The report also discusses a number of trends including packaging of industry-specific functionality, technology modernization using service-oriented architecture (SOA) and the need for global deployments. I agree with the first one about industry-specific functionality. Some vendors have done this by partnering with industry specific developers. The vendor provides tools and marketing, the industry specific developers provide the extensions to the system. I have also heard vendors touting SOA as the road to salvation. Any problem with integrating multiple systems can be handled using SOA… The cynics out there including myself are not swept away by technology hype. Global deployments can be a problem with respect to language, taxation and statutory requirements. However, I don’t agree that the vendor needs a presence in countries all over the world. The preferred approach is to Train the Trainer and let internal resources roll out the system. With the use of low cost communications and remote access over the internet, a physical presence is not always required.

Also take a look at more criticism of Gartner's report by The Enterprise System Spectator by clicking here.