You have to look at the application business region and region and industry by industry, said Oracle Corp CEO Larry Ellison during the company’s quarterly financials conference call last week, before going on to claim supremacy over SAP in a range of vertical industries and in the North American market where he said Oracle has 71% market share.
Oracle is not the only one looking to improve its position by intensifying its focus on select verticals. This is also an important part of the strategy of the last remaining independent European ERP vendor, IFS.
The big ERP market share is not interesting, said IFS CEO Michael Hallen, it is market share in select industries that is key for us. He cited MRO in the asset-management space as an example where it maintains a stronger position than major players like Oracle and SAP, and where it has 10% to 12% of the market, a similar or larger share than SAP. IFS said it is also the dominant supplier in the UK defense sector.
Although Oracle and IFS are at opposite ends of the business applications spectrum in terms of size and resources, they share the same view of the market as it moves forward. This provides an indication of how the shape of the overall ERP market and vendor strategies will change as the emphasis veers towards untapped verticals and geographic regions like China and eastern Europe.
