Report Date: July 2010 In 2009, the weak global economic climate slowed overall market demand for warehouse management systems (WMSs), with businesses forced to reallocate limited IT resources to higher-priority initiatives, such as ERP upgrades and improving supply chain planning (SCP) and sales and operations planning (S&OP). However, WMS market demand was actually higher than predicted entering 2009. Talking with clients, Gartner found that many organizations were more optimistic in the latter half of 2009. They saw it as a time to invest for a future return to growth, and upgrading their warehousing and fulfillment capabilities was necessary. WMS buyers continued to place emphasis on vendor and product viability and total cost of ownership (TCO). Cost containment remained a dominant objective for supply chain organizations, with improving customer service and productivity also very important priorities. The need to lower costs forced buyers to scrutinize the business cases for WMS investments more thoroughly in 2009, and they used the economic backdrop to negotiate very aggressively with WMS vendors. Consequently, TCO was a higher-level criterion than in past years, almost to the detriment of vendors that had to compete more aggressively on price than they did before. Leading WMS vendors continue to broaden and deepen their WMS and logistics offerings, supporting architectural strategies better suited to the demands of agile enterprises. In 2009, the WMS market was again led by Manhattan Associates Warehouse Management for Open Systems (WMOS) and RedPrairies WM/D. These offerings provide the broadest and deepest WMS functionality. Their technical architectures address many of the desires of new WMS buyers, and these solutions have been implemented in some of the most complex warehouse environments. Moreover, the vendors have extensive experience in supply chain execution (SCE) and compelling visions for how WMSs and, more broadly, SCE will evolve over the next five years. SAP and Oracle have WMS offerings in the Visionaries quadrant because they continue to make progress improving their WMS capabilities. These capabilities have strong global sales and support as well as intriguing strategies for SCE convergence, but they are not WMS leaders yet. HighJump Software has a unique vision for simplifying the WMS experience, from application administration and implementation to end-user ease of use for midsize warehouse environments, in particular. Softeon and Accellos are included for the first time in this years Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems as visionaries. Although its small, Softeon is an innovator, leveraging a strong service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform to challenge the traditional WMS vendors. Accellos demonstrates consistent success in selling and implementing in the small or midsize business (SMB) WMS environment, where TCO is key evaluation criteria for buyers.
Mentions: Accellos, Aldata, CDC Software, Consafe, Generix Group, HighJump, Infor, Manhattan Associates, Oracle, RedPrairie, SAP, Softeon, Sterling Commerce, Tecsys
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Topics: Market Research, Competitive Analysis, Strategy, Market Intelligence