Enterprise Applications

SAP retains the top spot, while last year’s runner up Baan is out of the
top three. At No. 2 is Oracle followed by Peoplesoft/JD Edwards.

While arriving
at a decision for enterprise applications, the two most important parameters
that influence a CIO are product features and the pre sales and marketing. And
interestingly, price and commercial terms come across as an attribute that is
relatively not as important, and yet the levels of satisfaction on this
parameter stand the lowest. SAP’s emergence at the top of the pack is a
greater satisfaction score on product attributes. The scores on the pre-sales
and marketing parameter are spread not very far apart.

The spread of the overall CSA Index for this category also indicates that the
IT industry is a tough one to be in. Baan getting knocked off from the top spot
is a result of more than one force. Baan overall performance is lower than the
average industry satisfaction score on the CSA 2004 index for enterprise
applications, unlike last year where it outperformed the industry average.

A
quick look at the index will tell you that Baan in the last year has not been
able to achieve even the average industry satisfaction level in any of the
parameters that define satisfaction for enterprise applications. Add to that the
fact that the process of recovery is has been more aggressive by other players
populating the industry. Oracle, for instance, which showed results much below
the industry average last year, actually outperforms the industry average this
year around.

While the key considerations are product attributes, the relative importance
of the second most important feature, pre-sales and marketing, ranks way below
the product attributes. This is unlike last year when both of these parameters
got an almost equal importance from the CIO.