The enterprise resource planning market is growing at twice the rate of the overall applications market in Europe, according to a study carried out by analyst group, International Data Corp. The study showed the ERP market is capturing an increasing share of software sold to the multi-user systems market, accounting for over half of the software license and maintenance revenues in Western Europe. SAP AG is leading the way in this space, far ahead of competitors including Oracle Corp, Baan Co NV and JD Edwards & Co. According to IDC, PeopleSoft Inc has managed to make big waves in the US, but so far has proved a minor player in Europe. The report, titled Enterprise and Integrated Enterprise Software, points out that ERP has received this level of success because of an increase in the operational efficiency of organizations and their ability to make changes when the underlying software can easily retrieve, integrate and present data from various functions from within an organization. IDC predicts the ERP market is going to continue to show a steady increase in growth over the coming years.
