Gartner says big fish will continue feeding through 2008

Gartner has a message for all interested in CRM, and that message appears to be: Choose Sides Now. Gartner analysts say, despite the frankly crazy number of mergers and acquisitions in the CRM market as of late, no end in sight is seen for this mass consolidation.

Through 2008, says the latest Gartner analysis, one in three CRM software vendors will merge, acquire and / or be acquiring in both 2007 and 2008. The Gartner party line goes on to imply that such movement is good for consumers, arguing that mergers and acquisitions involving, say, Oracle, have led to significant reductions in software license fee prices and fees.

In publicly announcing some of the results, Gartner senior research analyst Chris Pang predicted that “The next wave of [activity in CRM mergers and acquisitions] will spark a burst of innovation in CRM application research and development from 2006 to 2010." At present, Pang opines, the industry is entering a more realistic phase of buying and industry positioning.

Martin Schneider, an enterprise software analyst at The 451 Group, kicked in his two cents over at CRMBuyer.com as well. Since the lead driver behind much merger and acquisition is the desire to build out functionality into a suite, “even the major suite providers will continue to add onto their capabilities,” he argued. "We will see everyone from SAP and Oracle on down either making vertical plays or making one-off acquisitions to improve a certain feature like marketing or e-mail management.”

While the big guys therefore would seem to have their agenda set (Buy! Buy!), there is only one certainty for the small fish in the CRM sea: Nothing is certain. Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner, Inc. is a combination of four branches devoted to the gathering and analyzing of “technology-related insight”: Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events. Founded in 1979, Gartner now has 3,900 associates (including 1,200 research analysts and consultants) in 75 countries worldwide and serves 10,000 organizations.