One of the major themes at the recently held SuiteWorld 2013 conference was that NetSuite has been aggressively building a cloud partner ecosystem, the Autodesk alliance being one resounding example. During the conference, automated mobile workforce management (WFM) and optimization solutions provider ClickSoftware Technologies announced that it has partnered with NetSuite to build the ClickSoftware SuiteApp using NetSuite’s SuiteCloud Computing Platform.

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According to an ABC News/Time magazine/Washington Post poll, in very large US urban and metro areas, the average commuter spends US$16 and 52 minutes going 32 miles round trip to work each day. Long solo commutes can cost employees and their organizations in lost productivity, wasted resources, and additional expenses. In addition, many of these miserable commuters spend the rest of their workday without much interaction with their coworkers.

To that end, SAP recently introduced TwoGo by SAP, a mobile and cloud carpooling annual subscription solution that allows companies to engage their employees in ride-sharing to work. Read the rest of this entry »

While some analysts may question the true revenue figure that can be attributed solely to SAP HANA (i.e., whether SAP is intentionally crediting HANA with revenues that might be attributable to other SAP offerings), the fact remains that businesses have currently only just scratched the surface of SAP HANA’s potential. For example, SAP recently announced that HANA would underpin new releases of manufacturing solutions as well as updates for existing solutions covering engineering, manufacturing, and sustainable operations. The announcement was made at Hannover Messe 2013, held April 8-12 in Hannover, Germany.

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As part of its recent major global IT transformation, Telefónica has selected TOA Technologies as its global field service management (FSM) solution provider. This is a global contract agreement for TOA to be the standard FSM provider with its ETAdirect solution suite, covering all 24 countries in which the telecom provider does business across Europe and Latin America.

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After recently acquiring a sports ticketing and entertainment software solution, SAP has announced the launch of the SAP Scouting solution, an enterprise offering enabling sports franchises to improve their ability to identify and acquire the talent that should fuel their teams’ on-field success. SAP developed the solution in partnership with the National Football League’s (NFL) San Francisco 49ers during preparation for the 2013 NFL Draft. The announcement was made at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which was held March 1-2 in Boston.

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SAP has announced plans to acquire Ticket-Web GmbH & Co. KG, a provider of ticketing solutions and niche customer relationship management (CRM) software for sports and entertainment promoters. Ticket-Web employees will become part of SAP, and the deal is expected to close during the second quarter of 2013. The move is expected to pave the way for SAP to offer enhanced solutions to help promoters, venues, and teams market events over the Internet and better support arena management. Based in Wildau, Germany, Ticket-Web is established in Europe with its main product, ENTREE-tickets, an online ticketing service. The company also has niche complementary solutions for customer financial process management and CRM.

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One of my recent blog posts talked about the emergence of a few natively cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions that leverage salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. But looks might be somewhat deceiving here—while the products might be brand new and hosted on the latest cloud architectures, their owners and founders have been around the ERP block a few times before.

Take Rootstock Software’s co-founders Patrick “Pat” Garrehy and Chuck Olinger for example. They each have over 35 years’ expertise building software for complex manufacturing environments (Lockheed, Solectron, etc.). I’ve known them for over a decade, since, prior to Rootstock, they were involved with Relevant Business Systems. That ERP product, now part of Aptean after the recent merger of CDC Software and Consona Corporation (the latter in turn acquired Relevant ERP back in 2006) has had a couple of incarnations within Relevant Business Systems (at some stage also called INFIMACS).

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Today Blackboard announced two new mobile applications: an app for users of Blackboard MyConnect (a mass notification service) and mobile student debit accounts.

The former allows users to receive and personalize their messaging options from their mobile devices. This app is targeted at individuals who are or desire to be subscribed to Blackboard MyConnect groups—topic-based subscription lists provided by their institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

I have attended several enterprise software events in recent months that discussed trends and changes in IT, with big data, mobile computing, social collaboration, and cloud computing at the top of the list. For instance, at its recent SAP Retail Forum North America, SAP announced the availability of a retailing solution built on SAP NetWeaver Cloud (part of the SAP HANA Cloud platform) that effectively combines these trends.

How these current IT trends are converging was also highlighted at the keynote presentations session on the first day of the recently held TUCON 2012 conference, titled “Everything is Different.” Read the rest of this entry »

Many enterprise software events that I have recently attended have discussed the intersection of the following forces and IT trends:

• cloud computing, the benefits and caveats of which have been talked about ad nauseam, but the major premise is remote access for users via a mere Internet connection
• the so-called big data explosion in terms of volume, variety, and velocity (thus sometimes even referred to as “fast data”) and the advent of related high-performance data discovery, data crunching, and data analysis tools for mitigation
• social collaboration for both individuals and businesses, whereby companies should listen closely to their customers’ needs and opinions, and analyze these for deciding on the best possible course of action
• mobile computing, which allows access to data from virtually anywhere and on virtually any device Read the rest of this entry »

After having announced the launch of a number of cloud mobile apps, and in keeping with the mobility theme, IFS announced the new IFS Touch Apps Partner Program at the IFS World Conference 2012 in Gothenburg, Sweden. The program, which is aimed at delivering new smartphone apps to IFS customers, will officially launch on November 15, 2012, and five partners have already signed on. Read the rest of this entry »

Mobile computing (mobility) has been the major theme of the ongoing IFS World Conference 2012 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Given that the sales of smartphones and tablets have recently exceeded the sales of PCs, this path of discussion is logical. IFS has embarked on the following three-step path to workforce mobilization:

• Reach—when people are out of office, reach them via notifications, reminders, etc.
• Act—enable transactional users to use full ERP suite remotely via IFS Touch Apps for smartphones and tablets, in the same manner as when they are in the office. The look-and-feel will be the same as using IFS Enterprise Explorer on the desktop, with the addition of “touch” capabilities for tablets.
• Transform—with the input of professional ERP users and roles (e.g., road warriors), IFS hopes to transform some industries’ best practices via mobile devices (e.g., field service tasks)

At the conference, IFS launched seven new smartphone apps in the IFS Touch Apps series. Read the rest of this entry »

At Oracle Open World in San Francisco, Oracle launched PeopleSoft Mobile Expenses, PeopleSoft Mobile Approvals, and  PeopleSoft Mobile Company Directory. As a result, users will have the option to access important business information, processes, and analytics in real time. The three PeopleSoft mobile apps employ HTML5 and CSS3 technologies, which implies relatively low costs for deployment and maintenance. Oracle also announced that the applications are available with the latest version of PeopleSoft (9.1) and that current customers will not have to incur any additional costs for any of the three mobile apps.

Take our mobile BI survey. The business intelligence (BI) space is finally seeing mainstream adoption of mobile capabilities, and increasing numbers of software providers are developing mobile BI capabilities to meet the demands of their customers. This evolution is shifting the way people consume and use data. TEC is currently preparing a report that captures the landscape of mobile BI. Read the rest of this entry »

Part 1 of this blog series introduced TAKE Supply Chain, a supply chain management (SCM) division of TAKE Solutions, Ltd. The parent TAKE Solutions is a global technology solutions and service provider, which focuses on two principal business areas – life sciences and SCM (the company is listed on the Indian Stock Exchange).

My first post described TAKE Supply Chain’s genesis since its inception in 1994 as BPA Solutions, through its ClearOrbit phase from 2001 to 2007, and finally from TAKE Solutions’ ownership on. Throughout all these changes, the company’s mission has remained intact: “To improve the speed, visibility and control of extended manufacturing and distribution value chains.”

Part 1 also analyzed TAKE Supply Chain’s current product lines, starting with Demand-Driven Supply Network (DDSN) solutions. The first DDSN offering was OneSCM, which is an online supplier relationship management (SRM) platform that features multi-tier, multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) architecture and is designed for mid- to large-sized manufacturers and distributors.

Part 2 continued with the analysis of TAKE Supply Chain main product lines, in particular the Xtended Process Control (X.PC) SRM suite within the DDSN product line and the Enterprise Returns Management (ERM) suite within Demand-Driven Distribution & Fulfillment solutions (TAKE’s second major SCM product line). The final part of this blog series will now address TAKE Supply Chain’s remaining product line: Mobile & Auto-ID Solutions, and will discuss the company’s competitive landscape.

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