It wasn't all that long ago (2001 to be exact) that Modern ran its first ever ranking of the largest best-of-breed warehouse management system (WMS) suppliers. And it seems that one of the few aspects that hasn't changed in the interim is that Manhattan Associates still sits in the top spot.

Looking at today's top 20 (Top 20 SCE suppliers), only 11 companies that were on the original list are still there. In addition to new companies, there are also original companies (McHugh Software) sporting new names (RedPrairie). Furthermore, three suppliers of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software—SSA Global, SAP and Oracle—have made the grade. None of those three would ever have been accused in 2001 of having a best-of-breed WMS solution (the price of entry to our list then and now).

And while revenue of the leader has expanded more than 60%, total revenue of the 20 largest has actually shrunk from $938.3 million to $924 million over that time. Not exactly a market on fire from a growth perspective. But as you'll see in Associate Editor Jeff O'Neill's story, there have been quite a few mergers and the consolidation is not yet over.

Here's still another way to look at what's happened to revenues. Pete Sinisgalli, president and CEO of Manhattan, made an interesting comment at the company's users conference last month. He said that only half of Manhattan's revenues are now from WMS licenses. That means the company's WMS license revenue is the same as it was in our first survey.

So where did the rest come from? Everything from yard and transportation management to distributed order management. And Manhattan is not alone.

What was once all about best-of-breed WMS has become much more. Just as ERP suppliers have upgraded their WMS offerings, the traditional best-of-breeds have broadened out their offerings. In fact, the shift is so profound that we changed the name of our list last year from "top best-of-breed WMS suppliers" to "top supply chain execution suppliers."

So now you wonder what all this means. I would say it has everything to do with how your information needs have changed over a relatively short period of time. Your expectations have grown for this software as has the ability of suppliers to meet your needs.

Ultimately, we're all converging on the real-time warehouse (more on that next month). Blame it on your customers, or China or Wal-Mart. It doesn't really matter. What does matter however, is if you've been out of touch with supply chain execution software lately, it's time to reconnect.