THE BOTTOM LINE

An industry consolidation leaves buyers with fewer vendors to choose from, for ERP, middleware, and enterprise applications, Nucleus Research decided to compare the business models of the largest vendors to see which give the most value to their customers. It turns out that while SAP and Oracle still make money from - and invest heavily in - software, IBM has become more of a services provider. This is important to CFOs and CIOs, who expect their license maintenance fees to be invested in the software they use, not the consultants their vendors hire.