Steve Mills on IBM's ERP strategy

Monkchip James Governor is at an IBM Software event in Stamford, Connecticut, and posted on IBM software chief Steve Mills' comments on why his company doesn't get into the ERP applications business. Mills said: "We're a huge multibillion dollar ERP company. We just don't sell ERP applications, but services, systems and software around it. The 'at time of sale' ecosystem associated with ERP is 5x the revenue. The 'surrounding pool of money' is what IBM targets."

That positioning may become less compelling in the coming years as competitors like Oracle and Microsoft invest in top to bottom stacks. But, as long as SAP doesn't super "stackify" itself as Oracle is trying to do, and customers fear being tied too deeply into a single vendors, IBM will have plenty of surrounding pool money.