We Blog ERP

Sybase, an SAP company that provides mobile ERP software, today released an update its Sybase Unwired Platform, a platform for producing mobile ERP applications.

The platform allows enterprise developers to easily and rapidly build applications that enable mobile devices to access business data. It includes a tooling environment, integration with a variety os different ERP solutions, and support for Windows Mobile, Windows laptops and tablets, iPhone, and Blackberry. Sybase has several global partners that produce their own unique mobile ERP applications.

Sybase partners have found varied uses for the Unwired Platform. Bluefin produced an iPhone app that provides critical sales and customer information for sales people and managers on the move. HCL Axon, a consultancy that sells services to SAP customers, is creating mobile ERP applications that extend SAP solution capabilities for industries like utilities, oil and gas, travel and logistics, and financial services.

Independent CRM consulting company Maihiro designed its CRM to Go for Mobile Business application that allows mobile sales and CRM data access from devices including BlackBerrys, iPhones, and Windows Mobiles. NEO Business Partners has a NEO Mobile Suite, a host of mobile applications for SAP ERP and CRM that allows its customers to work on service orders and notifications offline on their mobile smartphones.

Gary Kovacs, senior vice president at Sybase, says, “Sybase offers the most comprehensive expertise and platform for mobilizing SAP solutions, as well as for rapid development and deployment of custom mobile offerings in the industry. Our leading mobility platform is fueling our partner ecosystem and extending our reach globally, enabling us to successfully transform businesses through enterprise-wide mobility solutions.”

Besides the Sybase Unwired Platform, Sybase also provides its own custom mobile ERP applications that accompany standard SAP solutions, which include Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM and Sybase Mobile Workflow for SAP Business Suite.

Technorati Tags: mobile ERP, SAP, Sybase

SAP today announced the availability of Business ByDesign feature pack 2.5, as well as three new predefined starter packages. BusinessByDesign is an on-demand business management suite. The feature pack is now available in China, France, Germany, India, Great Britain, and the United States.

The new update includes additions such as real-time in-memory analytics, mobile device support, and a customizable user interface. On-demand deployment has also been made easier.

As listed in SAP’s public release, The BusinessByDesign starter packages are:

Customer relationship management (CRM) start package – The CRM starter package provides customers with best business practices for sales force automation (SFA), enabling them to efficiently generate leads, manage all stages of the sales process and close deals, while laying the foundation to expand to the entire order-to-cash process. The CRM starter package can be implemented in approximately three weeks at a fixed implementation price of $13,500 (EUR 9,900) and a special subscription price of $89 (EUR 79) per user.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) starter package – The ERP starter package provides customers that have outgrown accounting-only systems with the integrated financials, accounting and analytics capabilities needed to manage the next stage of growth.. The package can be implemented in approximately six weeks or less and is available at a fixed implementation price of $37,500 (EUR 24,900) and the usual subscription price of $149 (EUR 133) per user.

Professional service provider (PSP) starter package – The PSP starter package is designed to give small businesses and midsize professional services firms affordable access to the world-class business process management capabilities they need to not only manage their businesses end to end, but also to level the playing field against well-capitalized competitors. Designed to go live in approximately eight weeks, the PSP starter package is available for a fixed implementation price of $45,000 (EUR 34,900) and the usual subscription price of $149 (EUR 133) per user.

SAP intends on attracting SMEs with these new product additions (starter packages are available for as few as 10 users). However, the listed prices, especially for the ERP and PSP packages, look too hefty for businesses that tiny.

“With the general availability of feature pack 2.5 we have achieved a major milestone,” says Peter Lorenz, executive vice president at SAP. “By providing this new release, we deliver substantial innovation to support our customers’ business needs today and tomorrow. The on-demand services for SAP Business ByDesign are operated on the most modern cloud infrastructure and allow for true volume business. We also expect the new starter packages to enable our customers to quickly adopt the services and realize immediate results on their path to an integrated on-demand suite.”

Technorati Tags: Business ByDesign, SAP

The iPad is rapidly gaining momentum, as over three million have already been sold. It is the easy on-the-go device that balances a laptop and and the iPhone. It is a portable solution, but has more data storage and flexibility that the iPhone. The iPad is ideal for business users who need to access information on the go. Here are five business ERP applications for the iPad that are great for day to day business processes.

1. Office HD- Word, Excel Access, PowerPoint ($7.99)

This iPad application allows users to create and edit .doc and .xls files on their iPad. The Office HD app can display PDF files and PowerPoint presentations, on the iPad. The word processor features include undo and redo, auto-correction, image and table support, as well as paragraph and character formatting. Spreadsheets can be created on the Office HD iPad app.

Documents can easily be transferred via Wireless Local Area Network, so users do not have to email themselves documents or upload them from their computers. The iPad Office HD app also has the ability to save documents. Users can create or delete folders to easily organize their files.

The Office HD app is compatible with Microsoft Word, NewOffice, Excel, Numbers, among other .doc or .xls programs. It is great for businesses who are looking for fast ERP solutions.

2. SAPPLAPP 1.3 ($0.99)

This iPad app is ideal for business users on-the-go who need to access their company’s SAP system. The SAP ERP application is helpful for reviewing transactions, sales figures, or the progress of business analyses.

3. SAP BusinessObjects BI ON Demand and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 2.0.319 (FREE)

This one ERP iPad app comprises both the SAP Business Objects BI On Demand application and the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer 2.0.310. This SAP app provides a cloud- for free! Users can upload up to 10 MB of data and a table of up to 2,000 data rows in SAP’s cloud.

SAP BusinessObjects Explorer lets users answer their business questions with as little as a few taps on their iPad. Users can check their business revenue, recent customer transactions, or other corporate data with this easy ERP iPad app. According to SAP, this ERP iPad app is “your business at your fingertips”.

4. Mellmo Roambi Visualizer 3.0.2 (FREE)

This ERP iPad app allows report data to be displayed, from many different sources including Salesforce.com, SAP Crystal Reports, and Microsoft. Users can even edit reports on the iPad, with the use of graphics. This on-the-go ERP solution allows users to have a mobile dashboard at their finger tips. The app can open .rpt files.

5. Citrix Receiver 1.1 (FREE)

With this iPad app, users can display the entire virtual desktop of Windows systems. The Citrix Receiver even supports the latest version of Windows, Windows 7. It gives business users flexibility because they can access their desktop from anywhere with their iPad and the Citrix app. The Citrix Receiver is user friendly and secure. Users can access data and applications from their desktops with this reliable ERP iPad app.

Technorati Tags: Apple, business applications, business ERP apps, ERP Solution, iPad, ipad erp, SAP, SAP ERP

Oh, what have those open-source hippies been working on these days.

An interesting development over at SourceForge.net is that the two most active projects for the past week, as listed Wednesday, are two ERP projects – PostBooks ERP, Accounting, CRM by xTuple; and ADempiere ERP Business Suite. These aren’t two arbitrarily large outliers. Openbravo ERP and webERP web-based ERP Accounting also made the top 15 list.

Ned Lilly, CEO at xTuple, reports that XTuple has about 500 active contributors and 25,000 people who have added to the application at some point. There have been roughly 400,000 downloads of the ERP project. It’s more difficult to figure out how many companies actually use the ERP system. XTuple has 200 paying customers, but Lilly estimates that there are anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000 running deployments.

“[It’s] a good time to be in open-source,” Lilly says. “It’s still the case that the technical guys find us and fall in love with the product and community.” Open-source business has become better understood and appreciated in recent years. “It’s almost happened overnight that we didn’t have to explain open-source to people anymore.”

Some open-source ERP software providers

Open-source ERP’s advantages come from its communal intelligence. Necessary upgrades can be found and resolved by any programmer, regardless of finances or business affiliation.

Granted, the security risk of depending on the unwashed masses of computer bums is what scares ERP industry leaders the most. Chances are that the landscape of the ERP market, still dominated by SAP and Oracle, will not change too drastically, too soon.

Businesses have turned to open-source ERP, though, to avoid the on-premise pitfalls of restrictive licensing, obligatory version upgrades, and high system maintenance costs. Open-source offers much more flexibility.

Application integrators too, may appreciate open-source. ERP vendor partnerships can become one-sided, where the vendor assumes control of the client. Open-source ERP can provide a customized solution centered on the customer’s actual needs.

Technorati Tags: Open Source ERP, Oracle, SAP, xTuple

SAP, a leading ERP provider, is readying “River,” a cloud-computing platform that supports simple extensions to its on-premise ERP system. This is one among several cloud projects that SAP plans to release in the future.

Carbon Impact 5.0, the first River-based application, is slated for release next month, and will be run on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. SAP’s Carbon Impact series is software to help companies reduce energy costs and emissions.

Vishal Sikka, CTO at SAP, stated that River is meant to be a simple development platform, with applications that only have a few dozen screens and can be easily put together or extended. However, Sikka has also said that SAP has put “a significant amount of work” into data security and authentication, which “have been missing in many cases in the cloud atmosphere.”

River will be opened up later to other partners and ERP structures. “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,” says Sikka.

SAP has been working on River for the past eighteen months.

More complex cloud applications will be based on the platform behind BusinessByDesign, SAP’s on-demand ERP suite for middle-sized businesses. BusinessByDesign will have a wider release later this year.

Despite these forays into cloud technologies, SAP remains conservative. Sikka says that SAP does not plan on running ERP systems from public clouds anytime soon. “Technology’s just not at a point where you can run a mission-critical application on a public cloud,” he says. “There isn’t one contributing factor to it, but really several.”

Sikka alluded to familiar concerns such as data privacy, integration, and regulation. However, he also cited a perceived upside to cloud computing as another potential issue: the ability to scale resources up in down in accordance to demand.

“Mission-critical enterprise applications have lots of ways in which they tax the underlying resources of a system,” says Sikka. While on-demand applications such as Salesforce.com’s CRM are more manageable, SAP’s Business Suite is too complex. “You’re running analytical things, you’re running long-running things, you’re running complex things like demand planning, workforce planning, things like that,” says Sikka. “A very uniform composition of simple hardware resources may not be the right [approach].”

Technorati Tags: Business Suite, carbon impact, cloud-based ERP solutions, SAP, vishal sikka

Today, Versata Software, a business-rules development platform, filed a complaint to the European Commission that SAP A.G. illegally blocked the company from selling products to SAP customers, which make up three quarters of the world’s largest businesses.

At one time, Versata had a working relationship with SAP, the largest European software company in the industry. Versata’s pricing software “Pricer” was popular among users of SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.

Then SAP allegedly took measures to cut into the revenue coming into Versata from Pricer. SAP barred Versata from any interoperability information, cloned the Pricer software, and integrated the cloned product with its leading ERP product. Versata claims that this is in violation of a European Union treaty that protects competition, and thereby consumer choice and competitive innovation.

“Versata asks at minimum that the Commission require SAP provide interoperability information, and that it unbundle its own pricing configuration software from its dominant ERP software,” says Thomas Vinje, counsel for Versata. “The Commission should also impose an appropriate fine.”

Pricing software automates complex product pricing that can be based on any number of factors: color, size, location, discounts, etc. Versata’s product was meant to be incorporated with SAP’s ERP system.

Versata cites the 2009 Microsoft case as a reference. In this case, the European Commission forced Microsoft to pay 1.6 billion euros in fines for making its web browser the default on its operating systems.

Versata already won a lawsuit against SAP for cloning software last year. A U.S. district court jury awarded the software company $139 million in damages, though the case is still pending several post-trial decisions.

Technorati Tags: ERP, SAP, versata pricer

A Facebook application designed by an enterprise software development and consulting corporation does not sound like the most exciting thing in the world, but the Germany-based company SAP pulls through with an informational and useful application.

SAP’s new application is called the Friend Network Optimizer. It has a social network dashboard where users can see their social activity on Facebook and statistics that show how users compare to their friends and other Friend Optimizer users. This interactive application shows you how to optimize your network by listing which people will add to your “network value”. There is a what-if scenario component where users can see how they would compare if they posted a certain amount of status updates or wall posts.

Screenshot of Friend Optimizer App

The Friend Network Optimizer mimics SAP’s Crystal Reports, which also include interactive charts, detailed reports, and what-if scenario models. The application is a way for the SAP developers to show and model their company and report method.

While the application was launched several weeks ago on May 29^th, it did not start to spread until yesterday when tens of thousands of users joined overnight. This application is worth checking out- if at the very least, for curiosity’s sake.

Technorati Tags: Crystal reports, Facebook, Friend Network Optimizer, SAP, SAP ERP

At the recent SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2010 Annual Conference, Novell was awarded with the ERP Executive Best in Product Innovation. Novell provides infrastructure software solutions that help facilitate user interaction with technology. Novell’s award winning ERP product is Novell Compliance Management Platform extension for SAP.

“We have worked very closely with SAP to deliver a solution that solves customer’s needs for continuous compliance and greater risk visibility. It is an honor to be recognized for our innovation and execution by ERP Executive magazine,” said Leo Castro, Executive at Novell.

“Risk management is a top concern for executives, which is why Novell recently partnered with SAP to create a solution that provides continuous compliance as a first step toward better risk visibility. With the joint solution, organizations gain insight into how compliance impacts their ability to meet business objectives.”

The ERP Executive is a source of information and tools for IT professionals. The publication also provides SAP managers with useful information that can be applied to their day-to-day professional lives. The ERP Executive Editor, Amit Bendov, said, “This award is meant to recognize a unique solution or technology that will dramatically impact or change the current market. We are pleased to acknowledge Novell for their accomplishments.”

Novell Compliance Management Platform gives SAP users to comply with security mandates and government regulations with its real-time view of user activities in the enterprise. The use of Novell Compliance Management Platform extension for SAP will help companies save time and money by automating business processes and avoiding potential errors.

Congratulations Novell!

Technorati Tags: Novell, Novell Compliance Management Platform, Novell Compliance Management Platform Extension for SAP, Novell ERP Executive Best, Novell ERP Executive BEst in Production Innovation, SAP, SAP Sapphire Now

ResearchPoint has chosen to implement SAP’s Business ByDesign ERP solution. ResearchPoint is a full-service contract research organization (CRO) that provides drug and device development services globally. ResearchPoint manages clinical trials for companies from study start-up through delivery of the final report.

Business ByDesign is SAP’s on demand ERP software that offers solutions to small to mid-sized businesses. SAP’s Business ByDesign provides large-scale business applications to smaller companies. The SAP ERP software is designed with the built-in functionality to manage financials, CRM, HR, projects, procurement, and supply chain. The software is available as a SaaS ERP solution that SAP installs, maintains and upgrades.

As ResearchPoint continued to scale, the company realized it needed a scalable solution as their ERP software. ResearchPoint chose SAP’s Business ByDesign ERP software because it includes business analytics, project profitability, and automated project billing. “We now have greater transparency into our projects and across all operations of the business, allowing us to make faster decisions, saving both time and money for our clients,” said ResearchPoint CFO, Patti Charlton.

“People are often surprised that a company of ResearchPoint’s size, with just a single IT staff is running SAP.” ResearchPoint puts major emphasis on transparency across project management activities. The company has praised SAP for making ERP software solutions that specifically cater to small to mid-sized markets. “On-demand is a remarkable thing,” said Charlton. “It allows companies of our size to get that big company functionality without the huge price tag.”

Technorati Tags: ERP Software, ResearchPoint, SAP, SAP Busines ByDesign ERP, SAP Business ByDesign, SAP ERP, SAP ERP case study, SAP ERP Software, SAP ERP solution

SAP announced at their recent Sapphire Conference that the company aims to “eliminate the divide between transactional and analytical applications with in-memory technology”. SAP highlighted that the next frontier for SAP would be pushing for developments in ‘real’ real-time computing technology. SAP plans to use the real-time technology to enable new applications, extend the reach of SAP systems across the mobile devices and give users the ability to manage operations from the shop-floor to the boardroom.

“We believe that enterprises are looking to unleash the power of the existing landscapes,” said SAP CTO Vishal Sikka. “And we believe in doing that without breaking continuity, without bringing disruption to your existing systems. Every once in a while, a set of technologies converge that change everything; entirely new sorts of innovations and products become possible,” hints Sikka at SAP’s new real real-time applications. “SAP is reinventing the real-time enterprise.”

SAP plans to speed up the existing SAP systems and liberate information within the systems to extend reach. SAP also announced their plans to launch a project code-named “Gateway” that would produce products that attach to existing SAP software so that anyone could build and deliver applications. Gateway would help liberate SAP application functionality and liberate content across mobile devices and presentation technologies. SAP will leverage Sybase technology to help with the process of bring SAP software to the mobile sphere. “The fantastic middleware that Sybase has around mobility gives us an unbelievable opportunity to unbind-to “unwire”- the existing systems that are sitting in your landscape,” said Sikka.

SAP used the conference to talk about things to come, like the “Real Enterprise 2.0”. SAP plans to bring in-computing memory to their ERP and business intelligence systems. SAP’s in-memory database will also have a faster implementation time. The best part of SAP’s ‘real-time enterprise 2.0’ is that not only will ERP implementation be lightening fast, but also without disruption. SAP has designed their in-memory database to implement without changing or losing any of the customer’s software or date.  The in-memory software can directly access SAP software to get information in real-time. The benefit of real-time ERP information is that CEO’s and managers can access critical information to make decisions and take action immediately.

Technorati Tags: SAP, SAP ERP, SAP real-time, SAP Sapphire