Johannesburg, 20 May 2003
Best of breed software vendors operating in the enterprise asset management (EAM) space, are beginning to face increasing opposition to their established markets from enterprise suite vendors.
So says Paul Whalley, managing director of enterprise solutions provider, Industrial & Financial Systems (IFS) South Africa, commenting on the recent publication of Gartner`s Magic Quadrant Reports on manufacturing software solutions.
"There is a definite trend towards a suites solution rather than best-of-breed approach in asset management, as companies try to reduce complexity within their IT infrastructures," says Whalley.
"Suites, such as IFS Applications, are reaching the stage where they can match or even better the functionality of best-of-breed solutions and provide the enterprise integration that is so necessary in today`s manufacturing environment," says Whalley.
In addition, new technologies such as standards-based component solutions allow companies to implement individual modules such as asset management without having major integration issues to core or legacy systems.
"It`s a `best-of-breed` suite scenario. Companies are getting best-of-breed functionality without the hassles and technology lock-in."
IFS is the only enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendor rated in Gartner`s EAM/CMMS Best of Breed Magic Quadrant.
The company is seen as the major challenger to market leaders Datastream and MRO Software and is rated as having the greatest ability to execute its solutions. It is also the only company poised to move into the leader quadrant as it is well positioned on the Completeness of Vision Axis.
"From our own experiences in Africa, we have found that asset intensive companies looking to shed their legacy EAM systems are turning to suite vendors rather than best-of-breed. It gives them greater flexibility in the future when integrating with other solutions such as supply chain management where ease of integration is key, " says Whalley.
IFS is also highly rated in Gartner`s ERP II Asset Intensive Magic Quadrant for suite vendors. It is the only ERP vendor challenging market leader SAP in the Leaders Quadrant.
"Obviously, it`s a major feather in our cap to be placed way above the other players in this field, and while these Gartner findings are typically just one piece in the decision-making process, coupled with the other quadrants, it does show that IFS is one of the few companies to keep or even improve its position in very difficult global markets," says Whalley.
In other quadrants, IFS was highly rated a Visionary in both the Large Enterprise and Midmarket Discrete Manufacturing quadrants and well positioned to move into the Leader quadrant. In Process Manufacturing IFS is well along both the Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute axes making it well positioned to move into either the Challenger of Leader Quadrants.
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