Alligators That Remain Are Not Going Hungry
The enterprise software M&A phase we’ve been going through has certainly reduced the number of large vendors in the market, increasingly turning Oracle and SAP into “restaurants” with software packages varied enough to suit almost all corporate palettes (and wallets).
You might assume the M&A mania would effectively spell disaster for the independent vendors that remain. But quite the opposite is proving true. Lawson proved the point quite recently, doubling sales despite incurring lower profits due to restructuring.
The alligators that remain (in the enterprise software swamp that Oracle and SAP are “draining”) seem to be eating just fine thank you very much. Is this a temporary phenomenon? We’ll see.