ERP vendors set sights on ASP

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors are fighting it out in the emerging application service provider (ASP) market, by unveiling Web versions of software to be hosted on the Internet.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors are fighting it out in the emerging application service provider (ASP) market, by unveiling Web versions of software to be hosted on the Internet.

PeopleSoft plans to tailor its newly-acquired Vantive customer relationship management (CRM) applications to the Web, while JD Edwards launched its second-generation hosting initiative to deliver ERP applications online.

SAP and Siebel have also launched online and outsourced ERP and CRM initiatives.

Kneko Burney, computing and internet strategies director at research company Cahners In-Stat Group, claimed the vendor's ASP strategy is viable but was off to a slow start among the target audience. "In terms of hosted applications in general, there are not many companies that are outsourcing enterprise applications. "You want me to give you my what?" is what companies are still saying," said Burney.Mikael Hansson, a consultant at FMC Software Consulting, said: "The whole benefit of ERP and CRM systems is related to their ability to understand the rest of the environment, and that is inherently not suitable for remote application hosting."

But Lyle Gant, managing director for SAP at VAR Origin, said: "The channel is evolving into an integrator role. We have to make all that stuff hang together. Companies are looking to us to tell them what they should be doing."