Small businesses have been left out in the cold when it comes to ERP.

SAP has labored for 48 months to get Business ByDesign, its SaaS product for the SMB market, off the ground -- and it's still not ready for prime time; Oracle doesn't even pretend to care about smaller businesses; and Microsoft has a sort of SaaS offering -- but just for CRM.

Bill Snyder, writing in Tech's Bottom Line blog, finds that "small businesses' on-demand ERP options are limited to offerings from small providers such as Intacct and RightNow Technologies."

Snyder provides a clear-headed look at the current state of the enterprise software world, which has been hit by a wave of consolidation that clearly doesn't serve the interests of the little guy, and concludes: "Luckily there is a wealth of smaller companies busily adopting open standards and moving toward the SaaS model."

Posted by Caroline Craig on May 8, 2008 06:48 AM