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by Alan Alper, MA Editorial Staff Posted on Saturday, April 01, 2006 12:45:00 AM Sign Up to receive Daily News Alerts in your E-mail Inbox    | Abstract: | Customers still appear to place a premium on software designed from the ground up that meets specific functional requirements that can adapt as business processes dictate. |
The acquisition of CRM software bellwether Siebel Systems Inc. earlier this year signaled to even the most ardent defenders of best-of-breed software that the business of creating stand-alone, specialized applications was a dead-end proposition. Even co-founder Tom Siebel acknowledged as much when he announced his company's long-anticipated plan to sell out to Oracle Corp. Following a year that saw the takeover of once-prominent best-of-breed software vendors such as Epiphany and Retek, as well as continuing turmoil for other point-application specialists such as Manugistics Group Inc. (Rockville, MD), few could argue with that perspective. Well, the death notice for the best-of-breed vendor, at least in some sectors, may be a bit premature. i2 Technologies Inc. (Dallas) and MRO Software Inc. (Bedford, MA), for instance, established a good deal of momentum throughout the last year amid the slowly shifting sands of the application software business. i2 is coming off its first year of profitability in years and is emphasizing its supply chain expertise in the form of composite applications that ride atop its new service-oriented architecture -- the Agile Business Platform. [Click to continue] |
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