ERP Software

SAP Loving Amazon's Elastic Cloud

 

SAP is streaming  their  emerging cloud  strategy across multiple development platforms, one of the platforms is called  "River," which is written to support lightweight extensions to its on-premises ERP software.
The first River-based application, Carbon Impact 5.0, is set to be released  next month and will be running on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud.

River applications are meant to be light and easy to use  with only a few dozen screens. SAP has done "a significant amount of work" on River in areas such as data security and authentication, " River will be opened up to partners "over time," as well as other infrastructure services, he said. "The first [application] is on Amazon, but the platform is designed to run on multiple clouds. Over time it will run on multiple clouds including our own."
Meanwhile, more complex ERP cloud applications will be based on the platform behind Business ByDesign, SAP's mid market on-demand ERP,

Although SAP builds out a portfolio of on-demand applications, its embrace of the cloud goes only so far for now. "While only 11% of respondents think of cloud as a short-term fad, an additional 72% need more convincing,"
“Technology's just not at a point where you can run a mission-critical application on a public cloud," said SAP's CTO Vishal Sikka

SAP CEO Leo Apotheker resigns

SAP chief executive Leo Apotheker has  resigned with immediate effect just seven months after taking over as sole chief executive.

SAP said late on Sunday it would return to split leadership with Bill McDermott, head of field organization and Jim Hagemann Snabe, head of product development, both already members of the SAP Executive Board, taking the helm.

The world's largest business-software company said the departure was by mutual consent and did not give a reason for the change at the top.

“When you look at SAP’s performance in 2009, it was really dismal, from a financial perspective,” said Phil Hamerman, an analyst with Forrester Research in Virginia. “I think the 2009 earnings call less than two weeks ago signaled the beginning of the end of Apotheker. Apotheker projected a persona that was defensive rather than a man of vision.”

SAP’s software license revenue fell 28 percent in 2009, after rising for years. Total revenue fell 8 percent to 10.67 billion euros ($14.6 billion). SAP needs to look outside the company for new ideas to revive growth, Hamerman said.

“I don’t necessarily think SAP insiders can turn the company around,” he said “The company could benefit from new blood at this point.”

 
 

Siemens cancels SAP maintenance contract

Siemens has cancelled their maintenance contract with SAP, due to SAP’s reluctance to offer a discount on the annual maintenance contract which comes in at over 30 million euros.

SAP CEO Leo Apotheker could not give Siemens special terms as he would open a whole can of worms around SAP customers and complaints over the value of the maintenance contracts. Looks like in today’s tough times the third party maintenance companies must be doing well.

http://www.riministreet.com/index.php

SAP to buy manufacturing bolt on

SAP has bought Visiprise, that specializes in manufacturing execution systems (MES) which as 300 employees.

This will give SAP the extra functionality needed to compete in the complex discrete manufacturing sector such as aerospace, high tech and defense industries.

"It signals SAP's commitment to manufacturing," said Simon Jacobson, senior research analyst at Boston-based AMR Research. "Now you can buy MES from your ERP provider."

Manufacturing execution software definition: A shop floor control system which includes either manual or automatic labor and production reporting as well as on-line inquiries and links to tasks that take place on the production floor. MES includes links to work orders, receipt of goods, shipping, quality control, maintenance, scheduling, and other related tasks.

http://www.visiprise.com

SAP press release

SAP postpones first release of SaaS ERP ?

 

SAP has revealed that they have delayed the launch of the much touted A1S for the SMB market ,the software is being tested by customers and now the release date will be put back to Q2?.

"It looks like building a web-native, ERP-based suite from scratch is a bit harder than SAP anticipated,”‘said Netsuite CEO Zach Nelson.

A1S which has "SOA by Design” Will allow SAP to   slash the total cost of ownership by 90% which I would love to see if they are right then the other software vendors might as well pack their bags but this does sound like a marketing statement.

A1S is part of SAP's strategy to get 100,000 customers by 2010; this service will be focused on volume and will be only offered as an online service with on premise being available at a later stage.

SAP hires SaaS Guru from RightNow

 

SAP has hired Peter Dunning  who was  the president of field operations at RightNow his new position will be executive VP of strategic industries.

I am sure he is going to have his work cut out for him trying to get SAP around the SaaS mindset but does show that the big boys even conservative SAP needs to offer a viable ERP SaaS package.

SAP SaaS new Hire

SAP SaaS ERP release for the midmarket

SAP has revealed its plans to launch a SaaS ERP SAP Version focussed on the mid market. Henning Kagermann SAP’s CEO announced earlier this week but no specific dates on release.

Netsuite CEO Zach Nelson has welcomed the announcement and mentioned that this will validate on demand within the ERP space. "Larry Ellison once told me that the best thing that happened to Oracle in the early days was IBM’s preannouncement of a relational database years before it was available. It gave credibility to the then-new idea of relational databases and created demand that IBM could not fulfil."

The thinking is SAP will use on demand as a loss leader and Netsuite is not too concerned (yeah right)and they have a eight year head start and that will give them space to keep ahead of SAP.

Oracle to buy SAP?

The rumour mill is on overdrive at the moment with Oracle putting in a bid for SAP.

The financial experts think there is not much substance to the rumour and might be done to prove to the public that Oracle is large enough to make a bid for SAP.

The timing is perfect to deflect attention away form Sap’s news on releasing a SaaS version for the mid market plus the competition authorities would not allow this deal to go through.

update

31.05.2007 :The story is doing the rounds again with SAP stock up ,the feedback is that  oracle has bought 8% of SAP.

Zdnet Link

Where there is smoke there is fire ,SAP is involved in all the rumours and is getting bad press at the moment for their future strategy.

Microsoft SAP Duet

Duet allows users to access data and processes from SAP's back-office applications through Microsoft's desktop Office software suite.

As part of their collaboration, Microsoft and SAP will regularly release additional integration capabilities, dubbed "business scenarios," with each release aimed at a specific function of a company's operations.

One of the several value packs planned for the next year will feature three business scenarios connecting Microsoft Office and mySAP Business Suite applications.

The business scenarios are:

Travel Management: which is designed to simplify travel planning and expense approval via Microsoft Outlook;

Sales Management:for accessing customer contact and sales-based analytics , easy scheduling of customer activities.

Demand Planning: simplify supply chain demand planning via Microsoft Excel.

SAP's 'Duet' with Microsoft also promises to tie NetWeaver BI and analytic data to the Microsoft Office desktop.

SAP Microsoft Duet

Tags: duet, sap, microsoft

SAP profit warning

SAP has declined to comment on rumours of a profit warning; German law states today would be the last day for SAP to issue any second quarter profit warning.

Forbes SAP ERP Info