This Wiki is intended to record the history (the good, the bad and the ugly) of the companies that are and were the Enterprise Software Marketplace. As a software category, Enterprise Software began with simple financial applications. General Ledger was the first widely used business application that solved real labor intensive/number crunching challenges for many companies. These early software companies that were writing General Ledger applications soon began to branch out and went on to produce applications for Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable automation. The functional reach of this new business software then expanded again and began to help manufacturing companies manage their inventory and operations, delivering MRP I, and later MRP II. Leveraging these new solutions, many companies soon there after adopted this technology and began to see real increases productivity.
This continued as MRP II evolved into ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) for complete enterprise-wide solutions that took in everything needed to run an inventory centric business. As other businesses in non-inventory oriented businesses needed the same kind of productivity, ERP expanded. Today, ERP continues to evolve and include more parts of more businesses. We now have additional sub-categories included such as CRM, APS, Ecommerce, MES and more. At the center are the transactions that drive these businesses, keep historical record of those transactions, and facilitate the accounting/financial and operational reporting.
The Enterprise Software business started like all new high tech segments, with entrepreneurial companies providing the very basics. New entrants in this space offered packaged solutions to enterprises who were writing their own programs, to leverage the capabilities of the early mainframe computers. As far back as the 60's and 70's these young software companies were creating applications to harness the rising power of computers to solve transaction intensive business problems. At the time "software" was not designer jeans even a defined market.
Obviously, that has changed today. The Enterprise Application Software market is $50+ Billion marketplace, employing hundreds of thousands around the planet, and continuing to offer businesses leaps in productivity and efficiencies. The companies today, however, are not the companies of yesterday. Companies continue to come and go in this marketplace like no other. Corporations that had hundreds of millions in annual revenues, and thousands of employees, are just not there any more. Some that were at one time practically household names, are near forgotten. Companies that helped shape and define how millions use this software in industry today, have been swept up, out, and thrown aside.
It seems a shame not to document all of this. Here, we are trying to catalog all the companies that have made a contribution to this journey. First, we need to make the list as all-inclusive as possible vacation packages. Add away. Comments and details on each company are encouraged, and welcomed. Especially of interest at this site, is how many of these companies stumbled, and failed along the way. Despite fabulous products and innovative uses of technology; despite heroic efforts of developers weight loss pills and company employees; despite some inspiring founders, companies still failed. They ran out of steam and money, they hit technology conversion walls, misjudged the marketplace, and some just sold out. Help us record it moving companies all.