Epicor Perspectives: the analyst view

A thousand customers and 1,500 total attendees may be 20% down on past years but represents a good effort by Epicor to get the faithful out to hear the latest and greatest when compared with other vendor led events where attendance has been down 30-40%.

Unsurprisingly, blockbuster announcements were thin on the ground. The emphasis was on assuring customers that Epicor is here to stay and that customers should be thinking about moving to Epicor 9, which was introduced last year.

Epicor has shipped around 890 copies of Epicor 9, has 60 live and been successful in attracting 275 new customers. However, the go live rate is anemic - stated as six per month. Epicor says this will accelerate dramatically as we come to year end, probably doubling the number of go-live customers by December, 31st. Watch this space for an update.

One surprise was the quiet discussion around Epicor Express, a SaaS offering currently in beta with a handful of customers and likely to ship early 2010. Aimed at small jobbing manufacturing shops, the solution sounds compelling but I'll need a much deeper dive before making the inevitable comparisons with SAP Business ByDesign. More surprising is Epicor's low key approach to SaaS. It realizes it left the smaller customer behind some years ago and recognizes a potential opportunity to fill a large white space with a cost effective solution. However, it is not pushing the marketing gas pedal and doesn't believe it will see significant traction in 2010-11. I think that's a mistake because SaaS can offer significant advantages for SMEs.

Notwithstanding, analysts seem upbeat. In this video, Ray Wang of Altimeter/Enterprise Advocates and Nigel Montgomery, AMR Research EMEA provide complementary and contrasting views on what they've seen so far.