Historically and traditionally, ERP was exclusive to manufacturing, going back to its roots in MRP in the sixties (manufacturing resource planning with IBM). For the past few decade, major portions of ERP solutions, most notably financials and human resources and, more recently, supply chain management applications, have found their way into sectors like government, banking/finance, health, retail, distribution and education/ administration under the ERP umbrella. These sectors are becoming increasingly more acceptable to seeking relief from ERP solutions, and in the Middle-East, in UAE for instance, there’s a growing market. While consolidation continues in many segments, the market continues to grow. As many industry leaders attempt to encroach on big company’s monopoly market share through aggressive acquisition strategies, they face challenges of the post-acquisition phase such as defining a forward strategy for integrating various products and the installed base. The need for an integrated solution has always been felt, especially when talking about an integrated enterprise from the shop floor up to the executive offices. Integration has been difficult, but service-oriented architecture (SOA) provides value to the enterprise by freeing key pieces of business functionality from individual systems and making them available for integration with other applications.