Microsoft ERP revenue grew to $1.1 billion in 2012, led by Dynamics AX: Gartner report

Gartner stirred up some rigorous debate with its recent CRM market share estimates, which put Microsoft Dynamics CRM revenue for 2012 at $1.1 billion, up 26% from 2011.  That number was seen as much higher than expected for CRM alone - other estimates usually put the Dynamics business overall - ERP and CRM - at between $1.2 and $1.7 billion.

And the research firm has recently released another report, this one on ERP market share which estimates that Microsoft's ERP business grew 4% in 2012, "mainly driven by Microsoft Dynamics AX".  According to Cincom senior manager  and enterprise software analyst Louis Columbus, Gartner puts Microsoft's ERP revenue at $1.1 billion in 2012, up from $1 billion in 2011.  

Combining Gartner's 2012 ERP and CRM market share reports, the firm now believes the Microsoft Dynamics product line generated at $2.2 billion in revenue in 2012, or between $500 million and $1 billion above where most other analysts see it.  Gartner did not respond to requests for  comment on their CRM revenue numbers.  As other analysts have pointed out, for Microsoft to have pushed past the $2 billion revenue mark for Microsoft Dynamics and not acknowledged it at Convergence 2013, recent analyst events, or elsewhere seems unlikely.

With that Dynamics ERP revenue estimate, Gartner positions Microsoft in fifth place in the ERP market with 5% of market share, behind SAP (25%, $6B), Oracle (13%, $3.1B), Sage (6%, $1.5B), and Infor (6%). The largest segment of market share still goes to "Others" with 37% of the market. The worldwide market size in 2012 was $24.5 billion, 2.2% higher than 2011, according to the report.

Beyond Microsoft, Columbus writes that the Gartner report identifies  the fastest growing ERP vendors in 2012 as Workday (114.7%, $190.3M), ...