Is Microsoft forcing software to go industry-specific?

WM Circle Logo

By: Wise Marketer Staff |

Posted on June 6, 2002

Is Microsoft forcing software to go industry-specific?

Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Navision indicates the software giant's intent to broaden its horizons from small and home-office (SoHo) businesses to include mid-market businesses, according to IDC.

The enterprise resource planning market is quickly maturing and changing based on Microsoft's change in strategy, according to Dennis Byron, IDC's vice president of ERP and industry applications research. Byron warns, "Enterprise application vendors need to think more industry-specific, or develop a 'niche strategy' based on either platform or function, if they're going to survive in the newly redefined enterprise applications market."

The firm says that those companies supplying applications to midmarket businesses should consider the following options when planning to move forward in the enterprise applications space:

  • New deployment strategies, including revisiting the ill-timed marketplace/supply-chain-exchange ideas of the late 1990's;
  • True partnering with compatible applications software based on semantics-level interoperability.

More Info: 

http://www.idc.com