IRVINE, Calif., May 16, 2006 — Epicor Software Corporation (NASDAQ: EPIC), a leading provider of enterprise business software solutions for the global midmarket, today announced its strong results in a recent evaluation by Forrester Research of solutions for managing the end-to-end Order Management Cycle.  Epicor placed among the top three vendors for overall strategy.

The report, “The Forrester Wave™: Order Hubs, Q2 2006” (April 20, 2006), examined the opportunity-to-cash processes of the Order Management Cycle incorporating enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM).  Epicor was evaluated on 115 criteria in hands-on lab evaluation of Epicor Vantage, the industry’s first manufacturing software solution based on a 100 percent service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Authoring analyst R. “Ray” Wang, senior analyst with Forrester, writes, “Epicor’s decision to fully service enable Vantage and deliver it on the Microsoft set of Visual Studio .NET technologies provides a significant advantage in the midmarket. Among the 12 solutions evaluated, Vantage scores second highest in delivering the data and infrastructure required to achieve order hub status.”[1]

The report continues, “Vantage’s broad support for inbound order channels places it in the Top 5 of solutions evaluated.  Epicor’s framework brings to the table full right-click functionality, strong presentation framework in a single sign-on (SSO), internal controls, state and event management, business process management, and ease of use in administration and configuration.”

 “Epicor Vantage is well-suited to OMC, leveraging a service-oriented architecture that provides ease of use and flexibility to customers,” said Rodney Winger, director of product marketing for Epicor’s manufacturing and supply chain management solutions.  “The Forrester OMC Wave reinforces that we deliver to manufacturers today, a technologically advanced solution, out-of-the-box, that manages the entire order cycle,  enables real-time connectivity across the supply chain, and provides the scalability and agility required by midmarket companies, larger enterprises and divisions of the Global 1000.”

Epicor Enterprise, a comprehensive and industry-specific solution for the global midmarket business, was named a contender in the Wave, supporting core functionality in many areas of OMC, and well suited to companies that are in the services industry and/or are adopting Microsoft .NET technologies.