IT Customers Give Poor Marks to Leading Enterprise Software Vendors

Enterprise software makers including Microsoft, Oracle and Peoplesoft seriously lag behind hardware suppliers HP and IBM when it comes to satisfying IT professionals and business executives who use their products, according to a recent study of 10 leading enterprise IT vendors by IDGs Computerworld, the "Voice of IT Management," and the InterUnity Group, a Concord-Mass.-based consultancy. The results of the Computerworld and InterUnity Group "Customer Satisfaction Survey" will be published in the May 24th issue of Computerworld and online at Computerworld.com. Conducted in April, the "Customer Satisfaction Survey" polled nearly 1,200 managers and executives on their experience with 10 of the top enterprise IT vendors, including Computer Associates, Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Peoplesoft, SAP and Sun Microsystems. Survey respondents - 46.6 percent of whom held positions at the director level or higher - were asked a series of questions that covered eight categories: product quality, product reliability, contribution to profitability, upgrade policies, licensing policies, customer service and meeting expectations. In the eyes of managers polled, hardware providers HP, IBM and Dell rated as the best enterprise IT vendors for customer satisfaction. This was in stark contrast to leading software vendors, three of which - Computer Associates, Peoplesoft and SAP - ranked as the bottom three companies in the survey. Overall, survey respondents ranked the vendors in the following order: 1. HP 2. IBM 3. Dell 4. Sun Microsystems 5. Oracle 6. EMC 7. Microsoft 8. Computer Associates 9. Peoplesoft 10. SAP