RedPrairie Corporation, a global leader in supply chain technology solutions that enable business process transformation, announced that it has been positioned in the leaders quadrant in Gartner, Inc.’s 2006 WMS Magic Quadrant report.

The comprehensive evaluation serves as a research tool, characterizing the WMS market, its vendors, and their solutions, and is based on two categories of performance criteria, including vendors’ abilities to execute and their completeness of vision.

The warehouse management system (WMS) market is consolidating. Although there are a
number of products in the market that can meet most warehousing requirements, the market is
shifting from differentiation based on core WMS functionality to differentiation based on:

? Technology and content to support a business process platform (BPP) strategy, which many users see as a way for IT to meet the demands of business for process agility.
? Logistics process consolidation to support unified management of transportation and warehousing.
? Process innovation to support what some have called “post-lean” supply chain designs, or what Gartner refers to as “chaos-tolerant” processes.

Neither of the leading offerings provides the deepest or most robust core warehousing functionality available in the market. Nonetheless, most large deals in the WMS market come down to Manhattan Associates’ Open Systems offering vs. RedPrairie’s DLx/D offering because of their overall capabilities to meet all but the most-complex warehousing requirements with few modifications. These offerings have a compelling vision along each of the key areas for product differentiation in the market. They also benefit from the vendors’ presence, sales and marketing.

Oracle and SAP have serious and competitive WMS offerings as part of their primary business application suites. For many SAP and Oracle users with moderate warehousing requirements, there is no need to look beyond the incumbent business application suite vendor. Although both vendors are pushing their offerings into larger and more-complex facilities, users with morecomplex needs should evaluate their business application suite vendor against specialist vendors.

Although not yet leaders in the market, HighJump Software and Sterling Commerce are the specialist vendors to watch, with unique and compelling visions for differentiated offerings that could propel them into leadership positions within the next two years. Manhattan Associates’ WMS for Windows offering is a straightforward, easy-to-use product on a popular technology platform that is positioned well to dominate the lower end of the market.

“As the fastest growing supply chain company in the world, with revenues growing from $60 million in 2001 to $170 million in 2006, we are proud of our position in the Magic Quadrant and other industry analysis. We have a worldwide presence in 23 locations and are able to leverage over 30 years of helping customers optimize their supply chains. Our growth over the past five years has its roots in continued solution enhancement helping us to position RedPrairie as a provider of end-to-end supply chain systems,” comments John Jazwiec, RedPrairie’s Company Leader.

The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Download the complete Gartner report here

Sources: Business Wireand Gartner

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