Will Linux become an R&D drain for mid-market ERP vendors? JBA InternationalÆs Nick Lawrie thinks that this could be the case in the near future. Currently the bulk of mid-market ERP software runs on an AS/400 platform, with NT rapidly becoming a much stronger force in the market.
However, Lawrie thinks that Linux could quickly become a major threat to both platforms. Lawrie says this is because the nascent OS is already achieving the runtime reliability of the AS/400 at Intel prices, so offering effective competition to both the venerable IBM system and the less scalable Microsoft OS.
JBA is currently customer testing its first ERP system running on NT. The problem that Lawrie foresees is mid-market vendors having to concurrently develop two or three different sets of software in the period before it becomes apparent which OS will win out. He says that porting systems almost always means less performance than with the original code. So mid-market vendors trying to compete in an ever more crowded sector could be faced with the problem of massive R&D spending.
