SAP's business user organization to move to Business Objects
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Company send a notice to employees saying its business user organization will move over to Business Objects, a company it's acquiring as part of a $6.8 billion deal.
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German business software vendor SAP plans to relocate a number of administrative jobs from its German headquarters and European subsidiaries to Prague, in a move aimed at streamlining its operations and reducing costs.
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German business software vendor SAP AG released a new version of its SAP Business One software with several functions designed for small and medium-size manufacturers.
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SAP plans to expand its focus on business intelligence (BI) software over the next year.
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Business Objects released new software WednesdayÂ that combines EPM (enterprise performance management), BI, and data integration into a comprehensive suite aimed at CFOs and business finance managers.
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InfoWorld - SAP has christened its&#160;suite of hosted ERP software&#160;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.
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Updated OS includes software applications designed for business users.
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SAP has decided to support virtual server installations.
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(InfoWorld) - SAP's launchÂ Wednesday of Business ByDesign, a hosted on-demand offering for mid-market customers, is a significant improvement relative to its other offerings in this space, but simplicity and ease of use still remain elusive to the vendor, an analyst observed. According to Ray Wang, senior analyst for enterprise applications with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, SAP's new offering is complex despite considerable research into the mid-market space. "Key features like easy access to reporting, quick portal construction, and easy integration to Office remain missing." Although SAP is not a newcomer to the mid-market arena and actually leads the space by revenue, customers don't necessarily look to the vendor for ERP products, said Wang. He thinks adopters ofÂ SAP Business ByDemandÂ -- originally codenamed A1S and targeted at companies of 100 to 500 employees -- will likely stem from its existing customer base, but that could change depending on how well the company launches and markets this latest product. SAP is hoping to capture the customer segment not serviced by the two existing products in its mid-market portfolio -- All-in-One http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/16/HNsapallinone_1.html and Business One. http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/07/30/SAP-polishes-Business-One-update_1.html CEO Henning Kagermann called it a "complete solution" designed for "end to end, flexible, adaptable, business processes within the company and beyond the boundaries of a company." The launch he said, comes at a time when globalization and the digital revolution are creating a new world of business, therefore requiring a solution such as this one that simplifies IT, reduces the cost of ownership, and allows customers to grow by exploiting the full potential of future business trends. Business ByDemand, said Kagermann, completes SAP's portfolio of mid-market offerings. Twenty customers went live with the product same day. The product will be available in the U.S. and Germany, with the U.K., China, and France to follow. General availability was not announced. Among the drivers behind SAP's offering, said Wang, is the shift in buying behavior in the mid-market space based on the emergence of easily accessed and deployable tools that don't require IT funds or board approvals. "That's changing the way people are buying software, and with that, it's creating a whole new set of decision makers." Also, if SAP is to tackle this space, it needs to offer a SaaS multi-tenant solution to grant customers long-term ability to cut costs -- something Wang doesn't think the company has accomplished with Business ByDesign. The hosted offering will have moderate success but won't be a "slam dunk" at the moment, predicted Wang, because other vendors, notably NetSuite, offers tools with rich configuration, a good user interface and already has a solid reputation in the space. Other on-demand ERP vendors, like Workday, have offerings designed for Web 2.0 environments, unlike offerings by SAP. Rival mid-market vendor, Microsoft, expressed no concern for SAP's new hosted offering. "While we certainly recognize other vendors as formidable competitors, at the end of the day the SMB spot is our sweet spot. We've been servicing this space for years," said Nancy Teixeira, group manager for Microsoft Dynamics with Microsoft Canada. "We understand that this is a market that other vendors would certainly like to go after as well." In the new year, Microsoft will offer on-demand service as an option for its mid-market customer relationship management products, said Teixeira. Pricing for Business ByDemand, including service and support, starts at $149 per user per month for a minimum of 25 users, and $54 per month for five "efficiency users." The offering will be sold initially through direct sales, and once in full deployment, the expectation is a vast majority of business will be driven by partners, the company said. Computerworld CanadaÂ is an InfoWorld affiliate. Â
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SAP AG is taking its Business Process Expert (BPX) Community initiative mainstream after several months of more limited operations with the aim of creating an online forum for business analysts and consultants to exchange information and access software from SAP and some third parties.
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OCTOBER 07, 2004  - Looking to penetrate further into the software infrastructure market, applications vendor SAP AG is rolling out a new set of Java and business intelligence enhancements to its NetWeaver middleware and integration stack.
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Saying customers have been asking for such a tool, IBM and SAP are building an application that would make it easier for customers to bring their SAP data into their Lotus Notes collaboration systems.
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(InfoWorld) - IBMÂ hopes to bring BI to a wider audience of midmarket customers with a new software stack developed in partnership with Business Objects SA, industry sources said. The stack includes IBM's DB2 Data Warehouse Edition, Business Objects' Crystal Decisions, and a version of the Linux OS from Red Hat or Novell, the sources said. The products have been integrated and come on a single disk so they can be installed on a server at the customer's premises to get a BI system up and running quickly, the sources said. IBM has worked to simplify the installation process by automating setup and configuration tasks, reducing room for error. The result is a BI appliance that can be set up and ready to load data far more quickly than most BI systems today, according to one source. The software is expected to be announced in the coming weeks and shown at the Cebit trade show in Germany later this month. A shipping date wasn't available, and representatives from IBM and Business Objects declined to comment. The product is being tested by some customers now, a source said. It comes at an interesting time for BI software, which is used by companies to collect and analyze data and help them improve the performance of their business. On Thursday,Â Oracle announced a deal to acquire BI software company Hyperion SolutionsÂ for $3.3 billion, and analysts predict more consolidation as big vendors like IBMÂ and MicrosoftÂ add further BI capabilities to their products. The product from IBM is an attempt to make BI more appealing to midsize customers -- a market Business Objects has been targeting with its recently launched Business Objects Crystal Decisions. It may be followed by similar products from IBM aimed at bigger companies and with software from other partners. The new product is a "soft appliance," or a stack of software for a specific task delivered ready to install on a server. It differs from a true appliance server, in which the software and hardware are delivered together with the software preinstalled. Some other vendors, notably Netezza, sell data warehousing appliances with some analytics capabilities built in. IBM may be going a step further by including third-party BI tools as well -- although analysts said it's difficult to tell how innovative the product is without having seen it. Alys Woodward, an analyst with IDC, called it a new approach for IBM and one that validates the server appliance model. It could also help Business Objects to fend off a challenge in the midmarket from Microsoft, which has been adding BI capabilities to its SQL Server database, she said. Ian Charlesworth, an analyst with Ovum, said Business Objects was the right partner for IBM to pick. "Crystal Decisions is very popular. It's easy to install, and it's lightweight. If you were looking to do a one-disk install, that would probably be the best one you could choose," he said. Each server can scale up to about a terabyte of data, and an entry-level system for 100GB of data could be priced at around $25,000, including the hardware and software, a source said. Jonathan Eunice, an analyst with Illuminata, called it an attractive entry price, although the value of the system will depend on its performance capabilities and other parameters, he said.
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An investor's guide to service-oriented architecture
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An SAP initiative to more tightly align its business software with Microsoft's tools is about to bear fruit.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM is filling holes in its SOA (service-oriented architecture) product line-up, notably in the areas of business process management and industry-specific services. "Any holes are a recognition of what customers are trying to do," Steve Mills, senior vice president of IBM's software group, said. "Early SOA adopters may have found gaps and had to do some handcrafting. They can avoid doing that now." IBM Tuesday made what it billed as its most extensive rollout of SOA offerings to date, including four new products, 23 enhanced versions of existing software and 11 new services offerings. IBM positioned the news as demonstrating that the entire company is focusing its attentions squarely on the SOA space as a revenue driver. So far, IBM has helped close to 3,000 customers put in place SOA, Mills said. However, only a "relatively modest percentage" of those users have been using the SOA approach for a number of years, he added. Mills stressed IBM's need to be seen by customers as "the" industry provider of end-to-end SOA capabilities. While there are plenty of small niche SOA players, IBM mostly competes with Hewlett-Packard when pitching an SOA portfolio.Â IBM is investingÂ more than $1 billion in SOA-related areas this year, he said. One of the four new products IBM unwrapped Tuesday is WebSphere Business Services Fabric. The software is based on the technology IBM acquired when itÂ purchased niche SOA player WebifyÂ in August and also draws on services from IBM business partners. The product includes prebuilt accelerators, tools and frameworks to help ensure that SOA applications comply with specific industry regulations. Another new offering is WebSphere Registry and Repository (WSRR) to help customers manage their Web services and shared business processes. The software enables users to publish and find SOA services and can also hook into third-party registries and repositories. The two other new tools are Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database and Tivoli Dynamic Workload Broker. IBM also has made SOA-related improvements in members of its WebSphere middleware, Rational development tools, Lotus collaboration and Tivoli systems management families. The new SOA services focus on three key areas -- security, service management and virtualization. Tracy LeGrand, chief architect and vice president of technology, strategy and architecture at Ameriprise Financial Inc., was particularly interested in the two new WebSphere products. The financial planning and banking brokerage company based in Minneapolis dates its move into what would later be termed SOA as beginning in 1999 and chose IBM as the IT vendor to help it adopt that new approach. Over the years, the customer has noted some gaps in IBM's offerings, which have required Ameriprise to act as a systems integrator. "This announcement has closed some major gaps for us," LeGrand said. "I'm not sure if there are more." IBM's WebSphere Business Services Fabric could help Ameriprise avoid duplicating work Webify and IBM have already done in providing industry-specific services relating to standards like ACORD in the insurance industry, LeGrand said. He's also interested in the vendor's WSRR since Ameriprise previously had to build its own registry.
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Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday plans to make available a connector kit that allows users to easily link Microsoft's Office Project Server 2003 with SAP AG's ERP (enterprise resource planning) products.