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.
SAP Discovery System for Enterprise SOA
For all you SAP developers out there ,SAP has released a sandbox for you to play in called SAP Discovery System for Enterprise SOA.
You need to speak to your SAP vendor for details but you do need to deal Hewlett-Packard they are offering a the package preinstalled on an HP ProLiant DL380
https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/3860 cost you $8999.00 or there is some leasing deal.
SAP Discovery System for Enterprise SOA offers
SAP Enterprise Core Component (ECC 5.0) configured with the SAP Best Practices tool suite
SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer
SAP NetWeaver '04 SP 14:
SAP NetWeaver Portal
SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management (MDM)
SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure (XI)
SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (BI)
SAP NetWeaver Application Server
Cadbury's implementation pains
Cadbury has taken a £12m hit on its profits after IT problems caused too many chocolate bars to be produced.
Cadburys was left with warehouses full of chocolate bars at the start of the year, after the rollout of a new SAP-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system led to an excess of chocolate bars building up at the end of 2005.
The new SAP ERP system is part of project called Probe ,Cadbury is hoping for £500m efficiency savings.
Cadburys is offering a unique experiment to increase their employee’s pay packet offering a month’s salary and a hundred thousand chocolate bars free to choose to what brand they want, have to get rid of the chocolate some how.
SAP merger ?
Henning Kagermann, SAP’s chief executive, has changed SAP's tone to a possible merger “There is no intention for SAP to enter any discussions,” this has contradicted what Hasso Plattner (SAP founder)did say that Microsoft, IBM and Google were the only companies that could feasibly buy the group.
Maybe SAP needs to write a application for board communication strategy?
SAP buyers:IBM|Microsoft|Google?
Hasso Plattner, of SAP is open to chatting to suitors for a possible merger or buyout saying : “There are only three potential buyers: IBM,Microsoft and Google of all companies. I don’t see anyone else. If shareholders think that a combination, and not independence, is better, then it will happen.”
Platter’s thoughts on IBM were: “I do not want to invent rumours because there are no talks. However, I do not want to say that I dislike IBM so much that I could not imagine such a scenario at all.” But the two companies have formed an agreement for IBM in the us to resell SAP to the small to medium sized market.
Microsoft: They did talk a couple of years ago but there would be EU competition issues there which could sour the party.
Google: nothing mentioned that would be a huge culture clash to manage but imagine having a SAP application that was flexible .If Google could change the mindset in SAP, having customer focused approach would work wonders.
There will be no dance with Larry (Oracle) though, he must be miffed.
The company that takes on SAP will need to have deep pockets Sap’s turnover is $64bn plus they are leading the field in organic sales with plans to double their stock price by 2010
IBM SAP here we go again
IBM to purchase SAP rumors have resurfaced again according to Ovum research company this is due to SAP down 1.6% on profits for this first quarter.
Talk is that IBM wants to have a complete stack of software but this would affect their claims to be independent vendor and losing revenue with the other ERP software packages they sell.
SAP SaaS it up
SAP CEO Henning Kagermann said they plan to release this year an on-demand version of its SAP All-in-One ERP software package for mid-market companies.
SAP has also just released their Q1 numbers up 18% ,not bad for a days work.
SAP Netweaver plans
SAP is moving forward with its NetWeaver technology and it’s Enterprise Services Architecture, saying that most of their customers are way behind in the upgrade cycle a sap upgrade can be expensive and time consuming.
SAP is pushing ESA to combine their Netweaver platform with business process modeling e.g. order to cash SAP wants to move away from inflexible middleware to more of a services based operation giving their customers greater flexibility with their SAP ERP Beast they installed.
SAP has 30,000 companies with a 100,000 different installations Netweaver has been implemented across 5000 sites .Senior management wants a slow upgrade cycle. "God forbid we would have had everybody migrating at the same time," the president of Sap’s products and technology group, Shai Agassi, said. "We would have had a disaster on our hands."
With the big ERP vendors the battle is being fought on the SOA services front and SAP has to be seen to be leading the race even if their customers are reluctant to buy into SAP as a flexible ERP software package.
SAP is planning to have 6000 Netweaver deployments in 2006.
SAP Cisco team up for Business One
SAP and Cisco Systems Inc will launch the SAP's low-end Business One application on an Application-Oriented Networking blade for Ciscos Integrated Services Router during 2006.
Cisco is there to support SAP roll out of business one software to branches or operations in different countries.
SAP would use a AON blade server to help with the roll out and integration instead of flying a team of highly paid consultants all over the country.
The comment I did like was "We automate the integration of Business One" ,if that is their attitude just ask for a serious reduction in the number of days in the project.
SAP Microsoft Mendocino given public preview
SAP And Microsoft has released office SAP software called Mendocino.
The project, which combines several SAP functions with Microsoft Office tools, allows end users to conduct work in the Microsoft Outlook environment. The first version provides budget monitoring, time and leaves management, report distribution and organization functionality.
This software will be aimed at large organisations initially; there are no details about cost but do say the software would take” a period of hours to install”?
Mendocino offers limited features within office 2003 but will expand dramatically when Office 12 is launched.
SAP Microsoft Office integration testing
Mendocino sparked intense customer interest after SAP unveiled the project plans at its Sapphire show in April. The software is intended to link SAP's back-office ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems with Microsoft's ubiquitous Office software, allowing customers to use the familiar Microsoft user interface to work with back-office corporate data from systems like accounting and human resources.
The first version of Mendocino is scheduled for general release in July. The software's first ship date is later this month, when it will go out to 40 customers for testing. In April, SAP plans to extend that release to an additional 50 customers.
SAP is concentrating initially on enabling a small number of corporate processes, including time and leave management, organizational management and budget monitoring.
SAP showed off a small demo of early Mendocino functionality at an SAP industry analyst meeting in Las Vegas on Monday. Corporate reports from SAP's software can be automatically sent to a user's Outlook box. Clinking on those reports allows the user to work with and make changes on those reports without leaving the Microsoft Office environment.
AMR Research Inc. analyst Bruce Richardson said the beauty of Mendocino is that it will reduce data entry redundancy. Today, users often need to transfer information back and forth from Microsoft's applications to SAP's; linking the systems together eliminates that duplication.
He expects early Mendocino functionality to be limited, however. "To me, the real killer app for this is CRM, and that won't be at all in the first version," Richardson said.
Analysts at the meeting said the Mendocino project looks like a big win for SAP and a potential complication for Microsoft, which sells its own enterprise applications through its Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) division. One of MBS's biggest selling points is its software's integration with Office. If SAP can also boast of Office integration, MBS's pitch loses some of its power.
"Microsoft is losing one of the advantages they wanted for themselves," said Josh Greenbaum, the principal analyst of Enterprise Applications Consulting Inc. "It's to the advantage of SAP and the detriment of MBS for SAP to do this."
Still, MBS is only one of Microsoft's fiefdoms, and its revenue is dwarfed by the sums Microsoft generates from its Office dominance. If Mendocino helps users draw more value from Office, Microsoft too stands to benefit from the product, analysts said.
SAP executives refused to discuss pricing for Mendocino, but AMR's Richardson expects it to be low compared to SAP's traditional per-user software licensing fees. Mendocino is an excellent opportunity for SAP to expand its footprint within its customer base, he said -- plenty of organizations license Office for more of their employees than use SAP. If SAP makes it easy to tap into its ERP systems through Office, that opens the door for SAP's sales force to push customers to expand their SAP licensing, Richardson noted.
SAP ERP info from computerpartner
Fourthshift is now a SAP Business One partner
IF you have forthshift as your companies ERP system you should be asking who is my partner for future releases and R&D ,forthshift or SAP Business One?
We’re moving quickly to seize growth opportunities by entering these new markets with the Fourth Shift Edition for SAP Business One,” Suerken said. “It’s important that we quickly extend the benefits of the SoftBrands and SAP integration to manufacturers in these new markets.”
New SAP Business One 2005
SAP has just released new functionality for their starter ERP package.Aimed at companies who are looking for 10-100 users.
Enhanced usability -- SAP Business One 2005 users can adapt the working environment to their own requirements by changing the size and type of the on-screen font. Enhanced online help offers detailed information on processes and procedures. Plus, improvements to the installer tool facilitate implementation and support.
Improved reporting -- Already powerful report capabilities now include new periodic financial reports and reports on customer account statements. A new inspection report enables a better review and monitoring of a company's warehouse transactions. Plus, the XL Reporter has been seamlessly integrated into SAP Business One 2005 -- providing enhanced functions for reports and financial analyses. Reports can be generated easily via an interface to Microsoft Excel and Drag&Drop functionality.
Expanded support for international trade -- SAP Business One 2005 includes multi-language support. This is particularly useful if a company collaborates with international business partners or is based in a multilingual country, such as Switzerland or Canada. In addition, sales documents can be processed using a range of selection criteria. For instance, delivery notes can be converted into invoices based on document number, total, recipient code, payment method, and a range of other criteria.
Bank reconciliation -- All payment transaction processes such as receipts, check issue, check receipt, credit card payments, and account reconciliation can be handled with SAP Business One 2005. A new bank reconciliation process also fulfills special requirements in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
Enhanced SDK -- Using an API programming interface based on COM technology, partners or customers can use the standard configuration of SAP Business One or make their own additional adjustments. The API is supplied in the form of an enhanced Software Development Kit (SDK). In addition, the SAP Developer Network will be expanded to support the SAP Business One developer community.
Oracle Fusion for SAP R/3 customers
Thirty days after Oracle introduced its Oracle Fusion for SAP (OFF SAP) programme, the number of SAP R/3 customers looking to make the switch to Oracle ERP applications is growing quickley. Faced with the issues of re-licensing and re-implementing their applications in order to upgrade from R/3 to mySAP ERP or mySAP Business Suite, more than 230 companies have registered in Oracle OFF SAP programme and expressed their interest in migrating from legacy SAP to Oracle applications.Expressing interest and actually making the change is the critical question here.
SAP customers show particular interest in leveraging the new Oracle programme to help save money, reduce complexity and improve the quality of business information by migrating to Oracle’s open, standards-based applications.
Oracle’s offer of up to a 100% license credit for SAP R/3 customers switching from SAP to Oracle applications is tempting many organisations, and the ease of migration is also a key concern for prospective customers.
Oracle Consulting has created an Insight for SAP migration programme to provide R/3 customers with a clear understanding of the migration process and its benefits, which include reduced upfront costs as a result of the two-year payment plan for the application license and support fees, with no interest and no payments for six months, followed by six instalments, available from Oracle Financing.
Oracle’s information architecture will also allow customers to run one global model and instance, freeing R/3 customers from the challenge of accessing and integrating fragmented data from legacy systems based in ABAP language.
I am sure that you can call SAP's bluff here on the upgrade and ask them what deal will they do for you to keep your business.