ERP Software

Sage R&D spend

Sage is spending most of its research and development budget on guaranteeing future revenue from its existing products rather than inventing new services says David Karlin, managing director for Sage UK's mid-market division another brilliant quote is "You have to stop spending all your R&D time on legacy. Companies can get trapped in that situation, especially if they're in financial problems," and "If that happens, you know you're facing slow but certain death."

Well said David ,full story at zdnet

Integrate Office 2003 with Microsoft Axapta and CRM 3.0

Microsoft has released Microsoft Dynamics Snap, a new collection of software packages that integrate in to Microsoft Office 2003. These four new programs help enable information workers to easily coordinate and manage data in Microsoft Axapta and Microsoft CRM 3.0

The different packages are

• Timesheet Management Snap-In,

• Vacation Management Snap-In

• Business Data Lookup Snap-In for Axapta and CRM 3.0

The software is available from GotDotNet.com 

ERP business process

PMP consultancy firm working with Lawson software have released research showing how IT managers underestimate the impact a new ERP package has on their business.

Only five percent of IT managers said they could install an ERP package straight out of the box.

9% very significant

28% significant

21% moderately significant

The research also found 50% picked software to match their existing business process and 40% adapting to their business process to the ERP package

PMP ERP Info

Sage gunning for the middle market

Sage 1000 is due to be released in May. The new application will be based around the mid-market Line 500 and CRM MME applications with a single database and common interface The vendor said that the software would enable end-users to map processes across their entire business in a single operation. Sage also claimed that this would lead to the retention of customers and a reduction in total cost of ownership.

Oracle vs SAP |open source threat?

Oracle has just bought Sleepycat a supplier of open source database software for developers of embedded applications.

Larry Ellison quote is, "We are moving aggressively into open source. We are embracing it. We are not going to fight this trend. We think if we're clever, we can make it work to our advantage." Which if you compare against Peter Graf, SAP's executive vice president of marketing, "We believe that open-source business applications do not have enough time to mature before this huge consolidation wave matures,"

Oracle and SAP have very different views about the threat/opportunity that open source has within the ERP software market .For Oracle it could be a way to manage Open Source within ERP and trying to make sure the tiger does not bite you in the arse .SAP has a reputation of being a bit arrogant and they will tell you how to manage your business process the SAP way. I can see their point about Open Source being great for non critical business functions but there is one way to get a financial director to pucker up and that is to tell him that his core back office system does not have a strong reliable roadmap.

It will be interesting to see what impact open source has within the ERP software industry.

Sir Julian Horn-Smith new chairman at Sage

Sir Julian Horn-Smith will be taking over as Sage chairman starting in August of this year .he comes from Vodafone as deputy chief executive and will bring to the table Vodafone’s experience of growing a global operation with Sage saying they want to take debt from a £100 million to £600 million to spend on acquisitions hopefully he can manage the change.