SAP is undergoing a makeover with some structural changes to certain segments of its extensive software portfolio. Just before its annual SAPPHIRE conference, SAP re-baptized its Visual Intelligence product as SAP Lumira, its new data analytics offering. Read the rest of this entry »

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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The “little” SAP Business One solution is an unsung hero of sorts at SAP. Indeed, more than 38,000 customers worldwide in nearly 30 languages and over 630 partners are often ignored as less newsworthy by market observers. The business management solution for small businesses (with 10–20 users, on average) can be deployed on premises or in the cloud, and is accessible via mobile devices.

During the SAPPHIRENOW 2013 conference, SAP announced the general availability of the 9.0 version of the SAP Business One running on Microsoft SQL Server (which is the product’s original database). With more than 50 new features, the latest version offers enhanced capabilities for warehouse management, infrastructure, and inventory management, as well as improved systems performance.

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At SAPPHIRE, the SAP company, SuccessFactors, announced a series of new upgrades as part of its human capital management (HCM) offering. Aiming at businesses that want to go beyond basic human resources (HR) functionality, SuccessFactors also enhanced its talent management tools. Read the rest of this entry »

Similar to the Ariba LIVE conference last year, one of the main themes at the Ariba LIVE 2013 conference was again that Ariba, now an SAP company, is making it easier than ever for companies to connect to the Ariba Network and collaborate. Accordingly, Ariba and Dell Boomi announced that they are teaming up to deliver pre-packaged integration as a service offering for selling organizations.

Designed to simplify and speed up integration to the Ariba Network, the Ariba Integration Connector, powered by Dell Boomi Integration Packs, aims to enable companies to collaborate more efficiently. The first available connector, which integrates with Intuit QuickBooks, was officially unveiled at Ariba LIVE 2013. Additional connectors to enable sellers who own Microsoft Dynamics GP and Sage 50 (a.k.a., Sage Peachtree) to integrate with the Ariba Network are planned to be released later this year.

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SAP has announced SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service, taking the logical but no less important step of taking its SAP HANA platform to the cloud, giving organizations a new deployment option for the in-memory platform.

The SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service will enable organizations to run mission-critical instances of SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and Netweaver Business Warehouse solutions in the cloud, powered by HANA.

SAP plans to deliver the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud through its partners within what SAP calls an “open + us” strategy, offering the capabilities from the partner data centers and/or SAP’s own data centers located worldwide. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

For a long time, PROS Inc. was a prominent pricing management software provider for both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) industries. Lately, however, the vendor has been leveraging its decades-long experience in handling large volumes of data to provide big data applications for sales effectiveness (pricing being only a part thereof). In other words, PROS now delivers prescriptive analytics and data science to help customers identify sales opportunities, develop offers, and set prices.

PROS has announced that it has signed an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with SAP to embed the SAP HANA platform with its big data apps. SAP HANA is a real-time in-memory database platform that streamlines analytics, planning, predictive, and sentiment assessments to allow business to operate in real time.

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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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QAD, a provider of enterprise applications for global manufacturing companies specializing in automotive, consumer products, electronics, food and beverage, industrial, and life sciences products, recently announced that the Automotive Edition of QAD Enterprise Applications has greater market share in China than any other ERP solution, according to the IDC report “China Automotive Industry IT Solutions 2012–2016 Forecast and Analysis”. Of the top five ERP providers in China, QAD was the 2011 automotive industry leader ahead of SAP, UFIDA, Infor, and Siemens.

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Rimini Street, Inc., a vocal third-party maintenance and support provider for enterprise software, including SAP and Oracle Corporation’s Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, E-Business Suite (EBS), Oracle Database, and Hyperion software, recently announced that UCI International has selected Rimini Street to support its Oracle EBS applications to save substantial annual support fees. UCI International is a manufacturer and supplier of vehicle replacement parts and car care products in North America, with facilities and offices throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, and China. Its brands include Airtex Products, ASC Industries, Autolite, FRAM Filtration, Holts, Prestone, and Wells Vehicle Electronics.

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SAP has announced the release of three new rapid-deployment solutions (RDS) for companies implementing the recently unveiled SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA. These solutions are making innovations like SAP HANA more accessible to enterprise customers looking to boost their enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) operations with real-time analytics. Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent press release, Rimini Street boldly declared the end of full-price software maintenance. The vocal and upbeat third-party software maintenance provider for various popular SAP and Oracle enterprise systems believes that a tipping point has finally been reached in the market for annual maintenance (certainly, the public cloud enterprise software providers have long been preaching even the outright elimination of maintenance expenses in their deployment model, but the focus here is on on-premises software).

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SAP and the Interaction Design Foundation (IDF) announced an alliance that aims to provide access to software design education to students and professionals in both emerging and developed economies. IDF offers free text books and online education materials created by leading academics and practitioners of software design.

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This could be the very first time as a market observer that my reaction to a merger announcement is not “Why?” but rather “Why now?” Namely, in late February 2013, SAP announced plans to acquire SmartOps, a leading provider of inventory and service-level optimization software solutions. Read the rest of this entry »