RIS News has released 2007 RIS Software LeaderBoard ranking of the top 45 application firms in retail. SAP, Oracle and Microsoft find themselves in the top ten with other software firms such as Tomax, Micros Retail and NCR.

SAP and Oracle finished in a virtual tie at the top of the overall LeaderBoard, which ranks application firms based on a satisfaction survey by retailers. The remaining firms in the top 10 are: Celerant, Micros Retail, ECRS, NCR, NSB, Microsoft, Epicor|CRS and Tomax.

New to the LeaderBoard this year are cross-tab breakouts that separate end-to-end providers from point solutions and billion-dollar giants from million-dollar specialists. It also separates voters by such segments as mid-tier, tier one, grocery, apparel/footwear and specialty retailing.

Heading the tier-one voter list are Oracle, SAP and Micros Retail. Among mid-tier voters, the top three are SAP, Oracle and Celerant.

In the broad-suite category, the top three are SAP, Oracle and Celerant, and in the targeted-solution category the top three are Reflexis, Cornell-Mayo and DemandTec.

Among specialty retail voters, Oracle and SAP are tied at the top, with Micros Retail coming in next. Grocery voters put SAP at the top followed by Oracle and Microsoft. Apparel/footwear voters selected SAP, Celerant and Oracle as the top three.

Since retailers seek application suites now more than ever, the Retail Concentration category is a breakout list of rising importance because it rewards broad-suite vendors by giving them one point for each module they offer in the retail vertical. Oracle and SAP topped this list in a tie. They were followed by Micros Retail and Tomax.