News & Views

February 2010 from Focus Research – The guide gives you a limited comparison of Aplicor, Epicor Software, Exact Software, IFS, Infor ERP LN, Infor ERP Syteline, Lawson, Microsoft Dynamics ERP, NetSuite, Oracle E-Business Suite 12, PeopleSoft Enterprise, Plex Systems, QAD, Sage MAS 500, SAP Business ByDesign SAP Business-All-In-One and SYSPRO.

180 View – The guide is not nearly as thorough as what we publish in the  CAmagazine but it does contain a few products that are not included in our analysis.  Our analysis had 44 products and a lot more detail about each of them. Nevertheless, the Focus guide does provide information not available from 180 Systems, and so we have referenced it.

It is interesting and confusing that the vendors don’t always include certain products in these types of comparisons. For example, Oracle declined to participate in the CAmagazine comparison but did participate in the Focus one, except that they did not include their JD Edwards product. One interpretation is that Oracle is no longer pushing JD Edwards but we don’t believe that to be true. On the other hand, Sage included their MAS 500 product in the Focus comparison and just Accpac in the CAmagazine one. This leads to the conclusion that they are not pushing MAS 500 in Canada or Accpac in the US, which I have also heard from reliable sources. Another spin is that SAP did not include SAP Business One in the Focus study, which might indicate that they are no longer actively marketing this product. SAP’s other products are also now targeted to the same market as Business One.