Epicor 9

Posted by spencer on March 19, 2010 under ERP Software | Be the First to Comment

We are currently doing a software evaluation for a client and one of the software vendors we are considering is Epicor. You may recall that Epicor is the old Platinum Software that started in the 1980′s and was a very big competitor to Great Plains (now part of Microsoft) and State of the Art (now known as SAGE). They have acquired many software vendors over the past 10 years and now claim to have done what Microsoft and Oracle have failed to do – make a Super ERP product by combining the “best” of all of their acquired software products into one ERP solution.

They called the new software Epicor 9 because it is a combination of 9 software products – Vantage, Enterprise (Formerly Platinum SQL), Vista, Avante, Manfact, DataFlo, Manage 2000, iScala, and Platinum for Windows. They currently have about 130 total installations that are live with the product and about 200+ companies that are in some stage of installing the software.

It is important to note that they say they will remain committed to continue to support and upgrade each of the individual software solutions they have acquired. However, their sales efforts have been focused on the Epicor 9 solution which means that upgrades and enhancements will slow for the other products and they will eventually phase them out.

The reality is that this software is a major upgrade to the Epicor Vantage product – written in .NET (They claim to be more Microsoft than Microsoft’s products). They have taken pieces and ideas from the other solutions they offer but this is really a Vantage upgrade. That being said, they have been making some noise in the market and are gaining traction. We will watch this product with interest and they should definitely be considered for an ERP software evaluation project.