India's Most Wanted IT Brands

Continued from page: 10

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Human Resource Management, Server/Network Operating Systems

Human Resource Management

This is one area that's become fairly active in the recent past. So far, most of the HR management solutions have been developed in house. Our survey also reflects the same with 12% of the respondents saying that they have their own in house/custom HR management solution.

As this is a fairly new market, there are many companies who're not even using any HR management package, in house or commercial. 48% of the respondents in our survey weren't using any HR management software. Other than that, the market is largely dominated by mySAP and Oracle, with some Ramco customers as well. More so, it's dominated by Oracle via JD Edwards and PeopleSoft, the two companies it acquired over the recent past. And it's also dominated by Oracle's own e-Business Suite.

Coming to brand persuasion, none of the brands seem to have a high degree of it right now. Again, as it's a new market, this is understandable. Nevertheless, Oracle dominates the brand preference chart due to all of its takeover brands. It also dominates in brand pull, and the biggest gainers in this is PeopleSoft. It has more customers switching into it from competing brands than switching out. SAP's mySAP needs to do something as its brand pull is alarmingly low.

The combined brand loyalty for Oracle is pretty high. But the situation here again is that there are just no brand shifts happening. SAP is sitting at a brand loyalty of 48% with 43% of its existing customer base not giving any answer on what brand are they likely to switch to. Likewise for Oracle e-Business Suite with 58% brand loyalty and 42% no responses. Oracle PeopleSoft is at 50% brand loyalty and 50% no response. Ramco has 71% brand loyalty and another 14% no responses.

Highest top of mind recall: SAP Highest current ownership: SAP Most likely to buy: SAP

So the bottomline is that this is largely a speed driven segment with plenty of opportunity. SAP seems to be the most speed driven brand in this segment, followed by Oracle and Ramco. It would be interesting to see how this segment fares next year.

Server/Network Operating Systems

We analyzed this segment in two ways. First, we looked at individual brands of Operating Systems. In this, the Windows 2003 Server was by far the most persuasive brand, showing a clear lead over all other brands. Even more interestingly, Windows 2000 Server was the second most persuasive in the list, and yet more interesting thing was that 'other Windows versions' was the third most persuasive. All Unix and Linux Operating Systems, as well as Novell NetWare, and MacOS came after this. Microsoft has really taken over the market. We then decided to combine all the Unix and Linux brands together as well as all the Windows brands together. The result is the brand persuasion graph given on this page. Windows is still far above the rest. Novell NetWare, which at one time was the most popular network OS is at the bottom most part of the graph. Its brand persuasion ratio however, is still better than all others, including Windows. However, the actual top of mind recall
and likelihood of buying figures are far too low.

While brand persuasion may seem very encouraging and tilted in favor of Windows, the brand pull situation is exactly the reverse. The number of switch outs to competing brands is far more than the number of switch ins from other brands. There are no prizes for guessing the brand with the maximum pull-yes, it's Linux. Unix is somewhere between Windows and Linux in brand pull.

Brand loyalty figures were another story altogether. While all brands showed strong brand loyalties, there were a good number of respondents in each who didn't mention any brand that they'd like to shift to. So, while Windows had 73% brand loyalty, another 23% of the respondents didn't say anything about which brand would they shift to. In fact, they didn't even say anything about staying with Windows. Linux had a brand loyalty of 77%, and 23% no responses for shifting to another brand.

Highest top of mind recall: Windows Highest current ownership: Windows Most likely to buy: Windows

As far as brand momentum goes, Linux was the most speed driven brand. Unix is a mass driven brand, and Windows is largely a mass driven brand. But that doesn't mean that its current market speed is slow. Brands that have the highest market share are likely to loose some of it to competitors.

Page(s)   1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12