The Library Automation Market: Why Do Vendors Fail? A History of Vendors and Their Characteristics

Librarians have been concerned about the long‐term success of library automation vendors, and their concerns have been confirmed by the decline and fall of a number of library system vendors, or, at least, by the demise of their products. This paper is an attempt to document the history of events in the library automation marketplace, and to put these events into meaningful business perspective. Among the issues examined here are: a) Who are the players? b) How can vendors be characterized? c) How do these characteristics reflect present and future success in the marketplace? d) How can the marketplace be characterized? e) How do these characteristics influence the success or failure of vendors? f) Is current success of a vendor indicative of a good product, of sound management, of customer satisfaction, and of future success? g) How, in fact, is success measured? h) Are there quantitative measures that can be applied to estimate the likely future success of a vendor?