Several of the received comments and conversations I have had about my last blog post has been about the original ERP definition. The purpose with this blog post is to cast some more light on this issue.

Enterprise Resource Planning was introduced to the world in a Gartner research note which was released April 12^th 1990. It was written by Lee Wylie and named: “ERP: A Vision of Next-Generation MRP II”. The foundational definition consisted of the following six components:

• Graphical User Interface
• SQL calls to a relational database
• 4GL (Fourth Generation Language)
• Client/server architecture
• Multiple database support
• Integrated software and database

Some of these components, such as SQL and RDB, are now industry standards. If you don’t support them, you’re no longer in business. Others, such as “4GL, client/server architecture and integrating logic into the database” are hopelessly out of date. Vendors’ that still have their logic buried in the database are doing what they can to hide this ugly fact. Others, such as Oracle, have renewed their architecture in favor of separation of concern toward enabling greater transparency and flexibility. Fact of the matter is that there are very few new enterprise software entrants during the last 15 years that are not database neutral.

Looking back (to the early 90s), too much of the discussion and decisions focused on the new technologies as such – which included the perceived advantage of the Unix operating system – rather than exploring the business benefits and allowing them to be the driver of progress.

New technology is no doubt the driver of progress in terms of better, faster and cheaper solutions. But adopting technology for its own sake is yet no winning approach. Progress is more safely achieved through fulfilling business needs than just adopting new technology. At the same time is it also important to get the timing right. “Leading edge” must not be “bleeding edge”. Just because all business solutions will eventually be virtual and run in the cloud it may not be smart to be first in line.