Today's enterprise and supply chain landscape: persistent success of top software vendors tied to expertise in viable midmarket niches.

Small to medium-size manufacturers don't have the name recognition as the largest companies, but they form the heart of the U.S. goods-producing economy.

IT solution suppliers that target these medium-size manufacturers--typically defined as those with between $50 million and $500 million in annual revenues--say the IT industry faces no challenge greater than delivering the productivity benefits of advanced computing to a base whose most pressing needs include IT affordability and ease of use.

"A medium-size manufacturer faces all the challenges of a much larger company, but often struggles to find the bandwidth to support the synchronization that needs to occur throughout the business," says Karin Bursa, a VP with Logility, a provider of collaborative solutions used to optimize supply chain performance.

But despite any impediments, the medium-size manufacturer has a clear need for the gains that follow from the right use of business and manufacturing system software applications.

For one, increased competition from low-cost labor regions only exacerbates the strain on industries already burdened with excess productive capacity coming out of the short but intense recession that came after the Internet bubble burst. The effect is "to increase the pricing competitiveness in the marketplace," says Charlie Allieri, a VP with Infor, an enterprise vendor of vertical market solutions.

But at the same time, as Bursa indicates, "One advantage a medium-size manufacturer has in competing head-on with billion-dollar businesses is that it's often faster, more flexible, and very customer service-oriented. To leverage those advantages in a period of global competition, medium-size manufacturers need to eliminate excess inventory, improve cycle time, and synchronize supply, production, and distribution. Finally, they must consistently maintain customer service levels."

A recent Manufacturing Business Technology Executive Broadcast, sponsored by IBM, brought to light the ramifications of a changing landscape of enterprise and supply chain solutions, especially as they relate to the small and midsize market, in fact, some say the true purpose of the current restructuring of business applications markets is to enforce a model that …