Like other software markets, the supply chain management (SCM) sector is on the road to recovery. The ARC Advisory Group projects that the worldwide market for SCM applications will grow at a 7.4-percent compounded annual growth rate for the next five years, reaching $7.4 billion in 2008. That projection led off a recent report titled Supply Chain Management Worldwide Outlook from the Dedham, Mass.-based consultants, but it's quickly being eclipsed by some of the other findings.

What's really grabbing attention is the report's rundown of the SCM market's top 10 suppliers—a list that includes Honeywell, ABB and Rockwell. Honeywell, ABB and Rockwell? Yes, indeed.According to ARC, several large industrial companies not generally thought of as software suppliers have become some of the biggest vendors in the SCM space.

But don't feel bad if this came as news to you; the role of industrial conglomerates in the software market was also a revelation to many of the journalists who cover the field, says Steve Banker, ARC's service director for supply chain management. "I recently received several phone calls from journalists asking about 3M's acquisition of HighJump Software, a best-of-breed supply chain company," Banker says. "The tenor of the calls was 'what is 3M doing in software?'"

Additional information on the study can be found at www.arcweb.com/res/scm.