Microsoft announced it had purchased a range of industry-centric technologies from partners to help it boost the vertical capabilities of its Dynamics AX ERP suite, and Oracle made a fistful of product and strategy announcements aimed at midmarket customers, including a new portal, midsize.oracle.com.

These concurrent events are no accident, given the vendors' fierce competition for these customers, not only from each other but SaaS (software as a service) pureplays such as NetSuite and Salesforce.com.

Vendors realize "that growth will have to come from the midmarket. It's a greenfield of companies with legacy or no ERP systems. The midmarket is the future," said Altimeter Group analyst Ray Wang.

While vendors have certainly made some headway into the segment -- Oracle's announcement claimed it had grown its midmarket customer base by 7,000 in the past three years -- many midsized companies are slow to adopt new software.

An Aberdeen Research study issued in August found that only 28 percent of 313 respondents were on the latest release of their ERP system. Thirty-one percent were one release behind, 13 percent were two behind, and 13 percent were still three versions back or more, according to the study.