Where is the Industrial Automation Money Going? - to ERP Suppliers!

In its latest newsletter, Advanced Manufacturing Research (Boston, Mass.) rounds up the quarterly reports of several of the leading vendors of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which is increasingly being used to manage the flow of information within and between manufacturing firms. The results are notable for the huge year-to-year increases in sales and profits: industry leader SAP AG (Walldorf, Germany) "rocked" the industry with an 82 percent growth in revenue to DM 1.417 billion (about $802.6 million) for the thrid quarter (ending Sept. 30); pretax profits jumped 86 percent.

AMR, which provides market and technology analysis for the ERP market, also reported on the most-recent results of several other ERP firms:

PeopleSoft: 3rd Q revenue $217.1 million; profits $28.7 million; revenue for the first nine months up 84 percent over 1996 period Baan: net revenue up 65 percent over 3rd Q96, or $173.2 million; net income $18.3 million
JBA International: first half 1997 earnings increased 33 percent, to $146 million; revenues rose by the same percentage Infinium Software: 4th Q97 revenue increased from 20.5 million to $26.7 million
Ross Systems: 1st Q97 revenue up 10 percent, to $19.8 million Symix Systems: 1st Q 97 revenue up 38 percent, to $17.6 million.

ERP systems integration continues to move deeper into factory-floor process automation; compatibility with popular ERP systems was a common theme at this year's ISA meeting (Anaheim, CA; Oct. 7-9). AMR's newsletter also noted the 2,000 attendees at SAP's Technical Developer's Conference, held in Atlanta during the week of Oct. 19. The company expects to release version 4.0 of R/3, its flagship ERP system, in the first quarter of 1998.

AMR will be reviewing these and other developments at its fall conference, in Orlando, Fla., on Nov. 5-7.