And then there were 2,000

SSA Global announced yesterday it is acquiring Epiphany, the CRM vendor.  Talk about a blistering pace of acquisitions - in 2002, it acquired Interbiz and has followed them since with Infinium, Ironside, Elevon, EXE and Baan. 

Of course, the chorus of "market is consolidated" increased after the latest SSA announcement. Well here is the irony. 15 years ago we were calling Charlie Wang at CA the consolidator as he acquired Pansophic, ASK and others and later packaged the application suites (PRMS, ManMan, Masterpiece) into a unit called Interbiz - the same one SSA acquired. 7 years ago, Jan Baan was called the consolidator as he acquired Aurum, Berclain, Caps, Coda and others. Yes  - of the same Baan Co that SSA acquired. Sounds more like musical chairs, but you can call the market consolidated if you want.

As I pointed out in my post Tastes Consolidated!More Competition! there are still over 700 packaged software companies listed with the SEC, and at least twice as many either private or listed on non-US exchanges. So this week, SSA reduced the number by 1 and Oracle by 0.6 (with its planned 61% stake in i-Flex).

But you can call the market consolidated if you want.

Author's note - August 6 - I just came across this neat article by David Dobrin on how specialist vendors can differentiate themselves while the big guys try to convince the world the market is consolidated. While he focuses primarily on ERP/supply chain type applications, any software vendor can benefit from his guidance.