PeopleSoft acquired J.D. Edwards. Then Oracle acquired PeopleSoft. Then Oracle again acquired Siebel, and the market for packaged enterprise applications turned into a simple blue vs. red decision. Beyond Oracle or SAP, not much is left.

The enterprise software industry is reaching maturity stage, and with it comes consolidation. Consolidation not just on the vendor side, but also on the customer side, with IT departments trying to consolidate multiple application instances into a handful in order to reduce support and maintenance costs.

Through this category, we will track this ongoing maturation process and try to understand how consolidation will eventually benefit customers by reducing complexity, while creating new challenges raised by de facto duopolies. Less is more.