Acquisitions

Enterprise Software Acquisitions Rank Companies Acquisitions 1. SAP Top Tier 2. Oracle Peoplesoft, Siebel 3. Sage Tekton, Emdeon 4. Infor SSA, GEAC 5. Microsoft Dynamics, Navision 6. Salesforce.com - 7. Lawson Intentia 8. Unit4 Agresso Coda 9. Epicor Scala, NSB Retail 10. Visma Accountview, Volym

As ERP proved to be a financially rewarding market; ERP vendors started using their cash flow to buy competitors. Acquisitions were so many in numbers, that most of the ERP vendors of the nineties now no longer exist as separate companies. All companies in the Top 10 used acquisitions to gain or strengthen their position. SAP bought Top Tier, Oracle spent lavishly on PeopleSoft and Siebel, Sage bought a host of smaller players. Infor, which is backed by Golden Gate Capital, has bought so many companies that they earned a position above Microsoft on the list. Microsoft did not originally make enterprise software, but decided to get into this growing market by buying some medium-sized players. 
As the Top 5 have been growing in the past few years through acquisitions, number 9 and 10 on the list - Epicor and Visma - are now rumored to be targets themselves. More consolidation is definitely expected for the future. 

Future developments: jumping the SaaS band wagon
A relatively new development is the increased interest in Software-as-a-Service. Both SAP and Oracle have announced a shift of their activities in this direction, spurred by the strong financial results of SaaS companies like Salesforce.com and Netsuite. 
Despite others jumping the SaaS band wagon, we expect Salesforce’s momentum to continue, and a Top 3 position is possible within two years time.