“The success of the e-commerce channel will be enhanced by a multichannel approach, where retailers leverage the store to make the e-commerce channel even more appealing to consumers,” Mim Burt, research director at Gartner, said. “In many product categories, consumers prefer to shop online and take possession in the store. Multichannel retailers that offer the ability to order online and take possession in the store will be offering increased flexibility to customers, which should enhance revenue for them.”

The multichannel forecast shows that the U.K. leads the U.S. significantly in the current percentage of e-commerce, which was approximately 9.3 percent of retailers’ revenue in 2011. This contrasts with the U.S. percentage of slightly less than 5.3 percent of retailers’ revenue for 2011. U.S. retailers must focus on boosting e-commerce channel sales and become more multichannel aligned in their strategies. They can do this, for example, by leveraging their store assets to complement and enhance sales in both channels. Western European markets, particularly in the U.K., have benefited from generally high Internet penetration and usage, a higher online per capita expenditure, and a better multichannel fulfillment infrastructure.

“Executing on cross-channel consistency will prove challenging, as retailers continue to grapple with siloed business process and a plethora of disparate applications,” Burt said. “Most challenging are the product-centric organizational structures that are no longer suitable for today’s customer-centric approach, which should take full account of customers shopping across current and emerging touch points.”

Channels have grown as largely separate entities, and business metrics in retail remain overwhelmingly product and channel-focused. Retailers need to change internal organizational alignments to execute a consistent cross-channel shopping experience. Requirements of shoppers across channels and the customer shopping process should be their guiding principles, rather than focusing on the ROI of multichannel initiatives.

“Focusing on ROI on multichannel is a misnomer,” said John Davison, managing vice president at Gartner. “Retailers should focus on identifying the impact of investments in one channel on the other channels. For example, our multichannel retailers’ forecast shows revenue from the mobile channel through 2015 is less than 2 percent, but retailers should not underestimate the impact this channel will have in pushing sales to other channels. Equally, an expected drop in store revenue does not mean reduced investment in their stores. In fact, the store will require more investment targeted at cross-channel shopper fulfillment as its importance as the hub of the retailer’s multichannel offer increases.”

The U.K. leads the U.S. significantly in the current percentage of e-commerce, which accounted for approximately 9.3 percent of retailers’ revenue in 2011, compared to slightly less than 5.3 percent in the U.S. Photo: www.imagine-your-world.com

"In 2010, major software vendors expanded their product portfolios, acquired companies where appropriate to their plans, and reached deeper into emerging markets," said Joanne Correia, managing vice president at Gartner. "The year represented a return to solid footing as the market recovered and expanded in terms of revenue and geographies. However, some regions did not recover as rapidly as others. Japan and Western Europe saw relatively modest dollar-denominated growth, while Latin America and Asia/Pacific saw growth in the mid-to-high teens, nearly double the market average."

Three of the top five vendors experienced revenue gains above the industry average. Microsoft maintained the number one position as it increased its worldwide enterprise software revenue market share to 22.4 percent in 2010. Growth results were enhanced by the broader adoption of new releases of the Windows 7 operating system and Microsoft Office 2010 productivity software. Microsoft's total software revenue results have been improved by new strategies aimed not only at individuals, but also at organizations and multiple delivery models. The company placed more emphasis on enterprise application and infrastructure software programming platforms.

IBM maintained its second position in 2010. It would be the number one enterprise software vendor if consumer sales of Microsoft's office and operating systems would not have been counted, Gartner says. IBM sells only to enterprises and partners. The company's software revenue grew more than 5.7 percent in 2010. The company expanded with a focus on e-commerce, marketing and sales with more than 20 industry solution frameworks as its "smarter planet" go-to-market strategy evolved.

Oracle showed the strongest growth among the top five vendors, as it increased its revenue 19.4 percent. Growth was achieved across all software markets, with faster growth emerging from its business intelligence, security, IT operations, and data integration and quality tools offerings. Oracle has kept most acquired technologies intact while integrating the infrastructure and middleware into Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFM) 11g with some integration across the application portfolio. Oracle expects continued market momentum in its industry offerings, middleware, data quality and integration tools, master data management, database CRM and SCM solutions.

Among the top 25 vendors, VMware led the group with more than 41 percent growth in 2010, followed by Adobe with more than 29 percent and salesforce.com with more than 28 percent growth. The top 25 vendors, ranked by total 2010 software revenue, grew on average more than 11.5 percent. These vendors accounted for nearly 68 percent share, or more than $165 billion, of the overall software market.

"The enterprise software vendor landscape continues to change," said Tom Eid, research vice president at Gartner. "Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are expected to continue as vendors and service providers look to expand their customer bases, add unique features aligned to a vertical-market or technology function, and improve overall market presence."

IBM’s software revenue grew more than 5.7 percent in 2010, thanks to its focus on e-commerce, marketing and sales. The picture shows the IBM 704 electronic data processing machine, the first mass-produced computer with floating point arithmetic hardware. The IBM 704 was introduced in April 1954 and used for aeronautical research. Photo: NASA/Public Domain

With a starting price of $50,000 per year, Google Commerce Search will run on Google servers. Retailers will be able to feed data from their product catalog to Google. This will allow the search engine to perform searches of a retailer's catalog significantly faster than what is currently available on many retail sites, said Google Enterprise Search Lead Product Manager Nitin Mangtani. The service is “cloud-based”, meaning that the information is stored in Google's data centers around the world. Commerce Search integrates with other Google products, so you can check its effectiveness using Google Analytics.

Google increasingly tries to diversify its revenue stream by adding products and services aimed at corporate customers. In 2008, approximately 97 percent of Google’s $22 billion revenue originated from online advertising. However, the company says that it its cloud-based email and productivity software now generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Footwear maker Birkenstock USA is the first customer using the product and Mangtani said a "good number" of retailers have been testing it over the past three or four months. The $50,000 price includes up to 10 million search queries.

There are now more than 125,000 developers in Apple’s iPhone developer program. The company has sold more than 50 million iPhones and iPod Touch handhelds, according to its last quarterly report. The top download category is games with over 21,000 apps available, followed by entertainment and books.

At this time, real competitors are few. Google’s Android platform, which ranks number 2, has 10,000 applications available for download.