Enterprise Apps Sales Predicted To Perk UpEnterprise Apps Sales Predicted To Perk Up

The recession that has plagued enterprise software vendors could be soon ending. Market-intelligence firm eMarketer estimates in a new report that worldwide enterprise software sales will increase between 3% and 3.5% this year.

"With recent merger activity among leading ERP vendors, enterprise software companies are positioning themselves for tough competition, especially in the midtier market," Steve Butler, eMarketer senior analyst, said in a statement accompanying the report.

The report also found:

• The top apps businesses plan to deploy this year include enterprise portals, content management, and customer-relationship management.

• Siebel Systems Inc. is the leading CRM solutions provider to clients of PeopleSoft Inc. and J.D. Edwards & Co. The company says it will be interesting to see how the PeopleSoft-J.D. Edwards merger disclosed this week will affect CRM sales for this newly merged company.

• Businesses are less inclined to spend money on large, one-shot CRM, enterprise resource management, and supply-chain management implementations. Instead, eMarketer said, companies are going ahead with smaller, bite-size implementations with a near-term return on investment.

• Interest in supply-chain management is returning, with companies looking to connect their buy-side supply-chain operations with sales and marketing personnel.

• Several companies seek to link portal and content-management solutions, while merger activity among content-management vendors in particular has transformed this market.