New and improved

ACN looks at some of the biggest hitters in the software market that will influence enterprises for the years to come.

While on-demand services are starting to cut in to the traditional software market, major vendors are still alive and well, and pushing the latest - and supposedly greatest - software offerings.

New products are coming in the market that takes advantage of the latest developments in the coder's art.

 

A key trend that is driving the release of new software offerings is the large number of acquisitions that are coming to fruition across the industry.

Most conspicuous among these is Oracle, whose spending spree over the past few years has delivered it a substantial pile of new technology, all of which must - in theory - be integrated with its existing offerings, and its other recent acquisitions.

This has led to the development of Oracle Fusion, a bold attempt to bring many of the vendor's largest purchases together. But while Oracle favours the integration approach, other companies, such as CA, are taking a much more disparate view of software offerings.

Another buyout junkie, CA has recently streamlined its packages, in an attempt to offer more clarity into the value it believes it can offer to enterprises.

The firm has also gone on the offensive, bringing out new products while bolstering some of its longer-serving offerings.

Other companies, such as Microsoft, have sought to plug significant holes in their portfolios through acquisitions.

In the case of the Redmond giant, it is now hard at work bringing much of its user-friendliness to products such as its Navision and Great Plains purchases.

For enterprises looking at developing their own roadmaps for future software deployments, knowing what is round the corner can be vital to the planning process - although not always in ways the vendors are happy with, should a sneak peek at the future lead to a decision not to buy in to that range.

Outlined below are a few of the recent or announced releases that will be shaping enterprise IT environments in the years to come.

Everything below comes with a disclaimer - these are not the opinions of analysts, and are based on publicly-available knowledge, so are not designed to make detailed buying decisions, for example.

And, of course, much of the material in this article is subject to change, in the case of any forthcoming releases.

Oracle fusion

Not so much a new software product as a mammoth project to bring together apps including JDEdwards, PeopleSoft, Siebel and E-Business Suite, Fusion has had a decidedly mixed reception.