CA picks SAP for ERP rollout
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Computer Associates will install an SAP ERP system to replace a collection of homegrown accounting systems. Accenture will help with the implementation.
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InfoWorld - Taking a page from major enterprise software providers like Oracle and SAP, Microsoft announced this week Business Ready Customer Care, an initiative that includes major enhancements to its maintenance and support program for Microsoft Dynamics, ERP and CRM, applications.
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In a move to strengthen its portfolio of analytic applications, SAP has agreed to acquire privately held Pilot Software, a maker of strategy management software based in Mountain View, California.
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SAP AG will unveil on  Wednesday a line of business management programs to be  delivered over the Web, becoming the first major software  company to make a big bet on software as a service.
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(InfoWorld) - SAP plans to significantly increase its own use of CA's Introscope application performance management software as well as its customers' access to the technology through an expanded relationship with the systems management and security vendor. The companies announced the first phase of that extended agreement Monday. Users of SAP's Solution Manager 4.0 software will now be able to view the same Introscope monitoring metrics already used by SAP's Active Global Support staff to help remotely diagnose performance and availability issues with their NetWeaver-based applications. NetWeaver is SAP's integration platform and lies at the center of SAP's newer mySAP ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications. SAP customers will receive an SAP-specific license so that they can access read-only Introscope features tailored for SAP dashboards within Solution Manager. Customers who would like to customize or add in additional Introscope functionality to manage other non-SAP applications can license those capabilities directly from CA's Wily Technology division. "It's a tremendous opportunity for us," Paul Melmon, vice president of CA's Wily. "Every single customer who goes live with NetWeaver has our solution with it." SAP first began licensing Introscope in January 2005 for use by its own engineers to both handle customers' application performance management issues as well as troubleshoot the vendor's internal deployments such as its corporate portal. CA acquired Introscope when itÂ bought Wily TechnologyÂ for $375 million in cash earlier this year. Since the purchase, most of Wily's 260-strong staff joined CA including its executive management team, Melmon said. CA is running Wily as a separate business unit and has committed to keeping in place the vendor's strong relationships with not only SAP, but also BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems. Melmon didn't have any information regarding the future of the other, non-SAP, agreements. Introscope supports Microsoft's .Net and Sun Microsystems' Java. As well as reconfiguring Introscope for use with SAP NetWeaver-based applications, SAP and CA have been working on a tailored version of the management software for Duet, Marc Thier, vice president, technology support at SAP, said. Formerly known as Project Mendocino, Duet is software jointly developed by Microsoft and SAP to enable users to access data and processes from SAP's back-end business applications via Microsoft's front-end desktop Office software suite. "We will expand the use of Wily for the performance management of all our non-ABAP products," Thier said. ABAP, or advanced business application programming, is SAP's proprietary programming language, and is what the vendor's older products like its R/3 ERP applications are written in. At present, SAP has ABAP performance management data from R/3 and non-ABAP, Java-based performance management data from mySAP applications sitting "side by side" in customers' IT systems, Their said. Come December, SAP hopes to integrate the two kinds of management data into a single user interface using its business intelligence module within Solution Manager to have "end-to-end dashboards," he added. As for how SAP might work with CA as a whole in future, Thier said, "We're very much at the beginning of a relationship with CA; we've nothing to announce at this time."
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(InfoWorld) - SAP AG is making a major change in the way it delivers ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications to customers, breaking with the traditional approach of upgrading the entire software release every 12 to 18 months. Instead, SAP committed Tuesday to keeping the current version of its ERP software, mySAP ERP 2005, in place through 2010 and providing new functionality via a steady stream of optional enhancement packages. The vendor made the announcement at its TechEd developer conference taking place in Las Vegas this week. SAP determined the new strategy in response to customer demands, according to Peter Graf, executive vice president of solution marketing for SAP. "The customer is in a dilemma," he said. "They want the least distraction to their business possible, while continually innovating in a very short time frame." Not having to upgrade entire SAP ERP applications on a regular basis and being able to choose which functionality to take on via the optional enhancement packages should help ease the pain, Graf added. MySAP 2005 will act as "a stable backbone" on top of which customers can add new functionality from SAP and its partners, Graf said. It's a very different approach from the several hundred product enhancements the vendor showcased in mySAP ERP 2005, he added. The first enhancement package is due to ship in December. It will include new functionality around talent management and financial collaboration, new composite applications, enterprise services, industry-specific capabilities and possible extensions to SAP's NetWeaver integration platform, Graf said. MySAP is based on NetWeaver. Going forward, SAP will likely issue enhancement packages once every quarter or two, with each package grouped around a particular theme. "We'll make sure we deliver them in a very focused way," Graf said. "For example, we'd say this package is all around talent management. If you want it, go for it. If you're not interested, don't use it." Other enhancement packages will includeÂ CRM (customer relationship management)Â andÂ Project Muse, a new GUI (graphical user interface) to mySAP applications developed through a partnership with Adobe Systems Inc.'s Macromedia business unit. SAP begun making mySAP ERP 2005 generally available in May at its Sapphire user conference in Orlando. So far, 200 to 300 customers are live with the latest ERP software version, Graf said, with several thousand other users live on the earlier release, mySAP 2004. SAP is hoping that users on older versions of its software, notably R/3 4.6C and 4.7, will also rapidly move to mySAP ERP 2005. While the message at Sapphire from SAP executives to its users was to adopt mySAP 2005 sooner rather than later, the message from TechEd is rather more blunt. "There's no mySAP ERP 2007. This is it. Move," Graf said. Â
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SAP AG on Wednesday unveiled a service that evaluates security settings across a customer&#39;s SAP enterprise system. SAP Security Optimization helps customers identify and fix vulnerabilities
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The model behind SAP's SOA The close relationship between HP and SAP, which led to the joint announcement of the latter's Enterprise SOA effort, has spawned a new applications development and deployment lifecycle model from HP's Bristol Labs â where much of the development work for SAP was carried out.â¦
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SAP has decided to support virtual server installations.
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Jan Baan, a name synonymous with one of the great ERP success stories of the 1990s, is back. And he&#39;s looking to compete with the likes of SAP AG, his former business nemesis, with a new company.
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SAP AG  on Wednesday  introduced a long-delayed line of Web-based business management  software for mid-sized companies, which is at the heart of a  strategy to accelerate the company's sales and compete in the  Internet software arena where smaller rivals are ahead.
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(InfoWorld) - In a move to strengthen its portfolio of analytic applications, SAP has agreed to acquire privately held Pilot Software, a maker of strategy management software based in Mountain View, California. SAP intends to integrate Pilot Software's core product, the business analytic application PilotWorks, into its suite of business software products that run on the NetWeaver integration platform, the Walldorf, Germany, company said Tuesday. No financial details were disclosed. In earlier interviews, SAP CEO Henning Kagermann said the company would make "fill-in" acquisitions in areas where it needed to "generate innovative add-on products around ... core products." Kagermann said "analytic capabilities are part of end-to-end business processes" and referred to embedded analytics as "the future." The Pilotworks application provides analytic tools for executives to manage goals and initiatives more effectively and bring structure and consistency to regularly scheduled operational review processes.
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SAP has acquired Norweigan software startup iLytix Systems, which makes a reporting and budgeting tool, and will use its technology in a new version of SAP's Business One applications suite that was announced Wednesday.
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(InfoWorld) - SAP has christened itsÂ suite of hosted ERP softwareÂ for the midmarket SAP Business ByDesign and said it will be available initially in the U.S. and Germany, with the U.K., France and China to follow soon after. Pricing for the service in the U.S. starts at $149 per user per month for a minimum of 25 users, including services and support, SAP said. Customers also pay $54 per month for each group of five "efficiency users," or casual users who access the software only to fill out expense reports and purchase confirmations, for example. SAP CEO Henning Kagermann presented the first demonstration of the product, formerly known by its code name A1S, at an event in New York Wednesday morning, calling it "the most important announcement I have made in my career." SAP has said it will invest â¬300 million to â¬400 million (about $400 million to $550 million) by the end of 2008 to support the introduction of the service, including a consumer marketing campaign on the Web to alter the perception of SAP as a provider of software for big businesses. SAP Business ByDesign aims to offer the gamut of ERP (enterprise resource planning) capabilities in a service affordable and simple enough for use by businesses with 100 employees to 500 employees, Kagermann said. The capabilities include manufacturing, purchasing, accounting, sales and marketing and human resources. The software is live today at 20 customers in Germany and the U.S., including a small aircraft manufacturer, a manufacturer of air fresheners, a technology consulting company and a company that offers packaging and distribution services to pharmaceutical companies. It still wasn't entirely clear from SAP's statement when the average business will be able to sign up for the service, but a safe bet for most countries appears to be 2008. SAP is "currently engaging with pilot customers" in the U.S. and Germany and "validating" the product with customers in the U.K., France and China, it said in a statement. Next year it will offer the service in additional markets including Australia and India in the Asia-Pacific; Italy, the Netherlands, the Nordic region and Spain in Europe; Canada and Mexico in the Americas; and South Africa. Other countries will follow in 2009. The company has said it hopes to open a new market for ERP among companies that rely today on spreadsheets and other individual programs to run their businesses, and were put off ERP in the past by its price and complexity. Analysts say the challenge will be to offer a product that's easy for companies to configure but which meets the needs of their individual business.
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German business software vendor SAP AG is rolling out a new version of its SAP Business One software with several functions designed for small and medium-size manufacturers.
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The U.S. Postal Service is about to get a $35 million Web-based human resources application makeover, based on the mySAP Business Suite from applications vendor SAP AG.
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SAP on Wednesday introduced a long-delayed line of Web-based business management software for midsized companies.