Is the Enterprise ERP market entering a "freeze" period?

I recently talked to organizations on their next ERP initiatives, and have also checked with IT vendors about their plans for ERP in 2009. Here's what I'm hearing from both sides:

From the user perspective:

• Maintaining the ERP and keeping it going costs a lot. The typical israeli ERP department (this mainly refers to SAP and Oracle shops) includes 10-20 people, and getting these numbers down is very hard. If anything, I think this number increases as these packages spread into more functional areas (more modules) and technological areas (Portal, BI, EAI etc) since the complexity is growing.
• Most organizations prefer to stretch the need to upgrade, I think we will see less upgrades in the coming year (unless the vendor announces end of standard support for older versions). This is inline with the common trend these days for enterprise apps - if there' no clear ROI, we won't do it.
• More opennes to ideas, 3rd party tools and delivery models that can help them keep maintenance/training/development/support costs down.

From the vendor perspective:

• Not many "new" large scale projects planned for 2009
• Vendors are counting on the fact that some users will have to upgrade to newer versions... I think some will rethink this decision.
• New modules that haven't yet made the big break: compliance/GRC, financial planning, vertical modules (core banking, core insurance) etc.
• Vendors are trying to find ways to help organizations be more effecient in their ongoing ERP operations.

So what is happening?

This will probably be a slow ERP period. Some organizations' I've talked to were planning to start they're ERP projects this year but some say they might need to push it back because of limited resources and a difficulty in proving a valid ROI.

The main challenge for user organizations in 2009 will be balancing the need to keep and maintain existing applications ("keep the lights on") but also providing services that help the organizations change (in order to survive) and grow. As a result, they will look for practical ways to help reduce ERP maintenance and support costs and this will include using 3rd party tools and using various sourcing models.