SAP tops CRM and ERP market

SAP is in pole position in the $7.1bn enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications market in western Europe, according to research house IDC.

The vendor dominated the western European ERP applications market with a 41 per cent market share in 2004, up two percentage points compared to 2003, according to the figures from IDC.

Oracle ranked second, with Sage in third, Microsoft Business Solution holding fourth place and SSA Global ranked fifth.

But the report said Oracle leads certain market segments, such as government, communications, and financial services in the UK and France.

The battle is now shifting to which vendor can establish the richest and most diverse software "ecosystem" on top of its ERP offering, IDC said.

Bo Lykkegaard, IDC's European enterprise applications programme manager, said in a statement: "Customers in non-traditional ERP industries such as financial services, communications and the public sector can benefit significantly as industry specialists make their applications available on top of ERP suites."

SAP has also been rated as a leader in the $2.5bn CRM market, along with Siebel.

Lykkegaard said: "SAP has successfully sold its CRM solution in the industries where it has a strong ERP installed base such as manufacturing, transport and utilities."

The largest vertical segment in the western European CRM applications market is finance, followed by communications and manufacturing. The UK is the largest single country market, followed by Germany.

For SMEs, a separate report from Yankee Group named NetSuite as market leader in business application suites.