Jaspersoft has decided to take the JasperReports Server Community Edition and make it available on Amazon’s recent offering called AWS Marketplace, free of charge. This will make it possible for users to use JasperReports as a preconfigured Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to be deployed as part of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

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In a very interesting move in what I would call a software consumerization trend, much like the AppStore, recently Amazon launched Amazon Web Services Marketplace (AWS Marketplace). The new service from Amazon will make available a number of cloud-based software to its users. Read the rest of this entry »

It used to be the case that PLM was perceived as being principally about CAD tools and 3D drawings and complex technical specs that no one really understood except the geekiest of PLM geeks.

This perception was justified, to an extent. After all, PLM and CAD tools can be complicated, engineers and designers tend to operate in highly specialized environments, and there’s a common misconception that PLM addresses execution rather than innovation.

But after attending the PLM Innovation 2012 conference two months ago, I realized that PLM is starting to gain a reputation as an enabler of collaboration and innovation. Read the rest of this entry »

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

The SuperYacht Group selects NetSuite
Industry tags: services industry
“The holding that includes magazine and Web site publishing, event hosting, marketing consultancy, and creative services has consolidated and centralized all its activities on cloud-based NetSuite ERP. The company has replaced its point solutions—solutions that had obviously become too tiny for them. The group has reported increased productivity, compared to operations under old systems, and quicker business processes.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Analyst

• TEC profile for NetSuite
• Press release

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My recent article SAP SCM – Stepping Out of (Relative) Obscurity analyzed SAP’s revamped comprehensive supply chain management (SCM) suite, its major components, and its supply chain process bundles. In addition to receiving a number of public comments and ratings by TEC’s readers, I was recently roasted privately during a lunch meeting with a couple of peers.

Namely, they expressed their surprise at the quite positive tone of the article, and at the lack of my typical skepticism (and sometimes sarcasm). Well, perhaps I am a sucker for a good “big picture” vision, and it seemed to me that SAP had created a compelling strategic story. The ideas such as the “Visual Enterprise” sounded refreshing to me, especially after several years of SAP being quiet on the Line of Business (LOB) applications delivery front. At the end of the day, it was important to highlight that the solutions that SAP is offering for supply chain executives expand across the traditional TLA (three letter acronym) boundaries of SCM, product lifecycle management (PLM), customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), manufacturing execution system (MES), etc.

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Buying a large enterprise software system is not something that many organizations do on a regular basis. While software vendors are constantly hyping the benefits of their particular system, buyers do not necessarily have the background needed to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Fortunately there are consultants dedicated to putting their industry knowledge to the service of the purchaser. These consultants provide impartial information and guidance to level the playing field and put the purchaser on the correct track to making an informed decision.

What follows are five specific reasons for considering the services of a selection consultant when faced with the acquisition of a major software system. Read the rest of this entry »

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

Miami-based flower distributor selects Sage ERP X3
Industry tags: Distribution
“Sage’s customer, Gems Group, reports that this ERP system was selected primarily because of its strong functionality set, Web enablement, graphical dashboard capabilities, embedded forecasting features, and full availability in Spanish. Flexibility was also important, as its users often need to access the software via the Web.”– Aleksey Osintsev, TEC analyst

• TEC profile for Sage ERP X3
• Compare Sage ERP X3 to its competitors
• Press release

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In recent years, the business intelligence (BI) and analytics space has been changing at an incredible rate, not only in terms of functionality but also in the way BI providers plan their go-to-market, sales, and pricing strategies. Core business requirements like pricing and usability are forcing software providers to radically modify the way they approach customers and how they deliver their services. Two recent announcements by software vendors QlikTech and Kognitio are prominent examples of how vendors are addressing the pricing issue. Read the rest of this entry »

A recent note that landed on my plate really grabbed my attention: As part of a long partnership, Microsoft and SAP jointly gave a demo in which Microsoft Kinect was used to exploit SAP’s HANA capabilities. Seeing data being managed by a motion-based device made me want to write a post speculating about the way users and computers will interact in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

Syspro ERP selected by rail car mobility solutions provider Trackmobile
ETO, Discrete manufacturing
“Syspro’s solution was the only ERP system to fit all of the company’s high-level needs, such as outside database integration, in-depth product configurator with complex pricing structure, Web-enablement to receive sales orders, and graphical customizable dashboards. Syspro has won a tough competition against Infor, QAD, Sage, and Glovia.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC ERP Analyst Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who has been covering the product lifecycle management (PLM) market will have likely met Oleg Shilovitsky at some industry events or at least read one of his impartial and knowledgeable blog posts on the available PLM vendors, solutions, and market trends. Shilovitsky has been building software products for product data management (PDM), engineering, and manufacturing for the last 20 years or so.

He spent 11 years (from 1999 to 2009) working for Smart Solutions, an Israeli company with the SmarTeam PLM offering, and then for the mighty Dassault Systemes, after it acquired SmarTeam and merged it under the ENOVIA PLM brand. Over these years, he held various positions in the company’s research and development (R&D) group and management, with the most recent position being ENOVIA SmarTeam Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

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Yesterday in San Francisco, SAP held a press conference to make two (perhaps three) major announcements about its strategy for the data management and mobility spaces. These announcements unveiled big-time movement in two major IT areas: data management and mobility.
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In a recent live demo session with enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendor Ability, I had the chance to get an in-depth look at Ability 585 ERP. It’s not every day that a product’s capabilities exceed my expectations, but this was the certainly the case with Ability 585 ERP, which is now TEC Certified for ERP for Manufacturing (SMB). Read the rest of this entry »

The market for contact center solutions is divided between customer relationship management (CRM) solutions and call center solutions, typically from different providers. On top of that, business intelligence (BI) vendors offer tools and add-ons to analyze contact center data.

This means that if you require “the complete package,” you’ll need two or three different solutions. Naturally, these solutions will not always integrate well together, resulting in extra deployment costs and an increase in the complexity of company activities.

But by partnering with SAS Analytics to offer the Intelligent Contact Center [PDF download], Scotland-based Sword Ciboodle aims to offer all the functionality required to manage and analyze contact center interactions and the data generated by these interactions. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever been burned by a service provider who promised great service but didn’t deliver? You’re not alone. Especially in the IT world, where virtually every company has a story about a consulting engagement gone wrong.

So what makes an IT service provider great? Are there specific things that the best service providers do to delight their clients? Are there things that you, as a client, can demand? Or is great service something you only know when you see it?

We came upon the answer when we conducted a reference check with a company we’ll call “Midco”—a midsize, US-based distributor of consumer products that had hired a consultant firm to handle its SAP implementation.

The project turned out to be so successful that when Midco filled out our reference check questionnaire, they gave the consultant some of the most effusive praise we’ve ever seen.

To find out what was driving all that excitement, we sat down with Midco’s chief financial officer (CFO), whom we’ll call “Bob,” a former consultant and veteran of several major software implementations.

Bob was happy to talk about what made this consultant so remarkable, and over the course of our conversation, he kept coming back to the same five things.

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