Last week JDA and Red Prairie announced that they are merging. This continues to demonstrate that niche vendors are having a hard time surviving. Why? In my opinion when you have a large customer base on SAP and SAP can bring best of breed functionality to our customers, the question begs: Why not SAP? These vendors are realizing that they can no longer survive in such a niche environment. Personally, I have been to many customers that have asked me “what is SAP doing? Are you guys as good? We want SAP to do this! We are tired of interfaces!” Well the answer is “yes we can!” SAP is an integrated best of breed. …and no offence to JDA/RP but, what a mess, so which of the systems will survive? I would not want to be a customer running JDA, Manu, I2, RP, MARC. So which will survive? And then I have to migrate, not upgrade! Let’s all keep an eye on this one!
