SAP Announces Improvements In Its Products And Attract New Customers

SAP BusinessObjects Data Services and BusinessObjects Data Federator, which are now more integrated into the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse, can supply all the business processes into reliable data.

To provide organizations a reliable information base, intended for all of their key processes and decision-making, SAP AG announced enhancements to SAP software BusinessObjects Data Services and SAP BusinessObjects Data Federator, which are an integral part of SAP BusinessObjects management information.

These solutions are compatible with both environments SAP and non-SAP and SAP customers see their compatibility is strengthened through integration with SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW). Whatever the underlying system, SAP provides business information whose reliability is assured, allowing them to successfully launch initiatives in areas such as decision analysis, management of customer relationship management (CRM), the Resource Planning (ERP), the chain management (SCM), migration of systems and data governance. The significant growth of its customer base and strong recognition of the sector to illustrate how the market dominance of SAP BusinessObjects Information Management gives business users the ability to have integrated data and accurate and timely.

In a world accumulating huge amounts of data and many disparate sources, it is more important than ever to rely on the accuracy and timeliness of corporate information. The growth of organizations, internal and external, has exacerbated the challenge. The SAP BusinessObjects information management continue to help companies manage this problem by enabling them to ensure the availability, integrity and transparency of all their data, regardless of their origin and format.

SAP Abandons The Classic Accommodation

The hosting business outsourcing solutions historic SAP is transferred to T-Systems. Application SaaS Business ByDesign is not affected by the operation.

T-Systems is preparing to hand over the hosting business of SAP in Europe. Subject to the approval of competition authorities, the transaction is expected to close early October 2009. The applications of nearly 90 clients, now housed at SAP, will then be transferred to plants in the SSII. The release of T-Systems does not specify if those used by SAP are concerned.

The subsidiary of leading Telecom company said that this operation is part of its building strategy around SAP environments. Recently, it has won a huge contract integration and outsourcing services for the SAP ERP supplier of Continental, and resumed business consultancy Logica's SAP in Switzerland. In contrast, SAP continues to operate the lodging its application in SaaS Business ByDesign. Internal source, the search for partners to ensure that service should not start before 2010.

Crisis Virtual SAP

The German press, notably by the voices of co-founders of SAP, excessive measures that may conceal other intentions.

End of January 2009, SAP released strong financial results for fiscal 2008, hailed by the business press: 14% increase in turnover, 1.88 billion euros in net profit, 1.84 billion of cash flow (free cash flow), and an operating margin of 24.6%. Where others open the champagne, SAP talks about crisis and poured into catastrophic. By the end of 2008, SAP prepared by the spirits of drastic cost reductions that have affected the working conditions of many employees. In discussing the possible use of more stringent measures (if necessary), SAP made a diversion and refuses its employees a clear justification of its real motivations.

SAP Attack SaaS

A provider of accounting software online, has refuted claims the CEO of SAP, the software online is "more expensive and risky" than traditional desktop software.

SAP is a leading global provider of management software. End of last year, it began testing its own products "SaaS Business by Design ", but they found it difficult to migrate its existing portfolio in SaaS and could not find the right format to make it profitable.

Mark Davies, Director of e-ECONOMIC said: I am perplexed by comments from SAP. SAP has obviously thought it was desirable to get involved in SaaS, yet less than a year later, they began to complain. If experiencing difficulties in implementing its business model to SaaS, is one thing, but to absorb the entire principle of SaaS is misleading to consumers and patently false!.

According to Gartner, more than one third of all software will be delivered by SaaS within 3 years and a recent McKinsey report said that 61% of CIOs considering SaaS. The service charge is SAP raise 30% last year. In a recession, companies will seek to reduce costs and increase efficiency in every way possible, and the costs and benefits of SaaS are difficult to deny. Based on comparisons of prices of a number of major suppliers of traditional accounting software, small businesses can save an average of up to 59% on the cost basis of accounting software using an online solution instead of traditional software.

SAP Market leads In Business Intelligence

The market for Business Intelligence has increased by 21.7% in 2008 compared to 2007 to reach 8.8 billion dollars. SAP's are 23.8% of this big cake way ahead of SAS and Oracle are both at 14.6%.

Decomposition of the BI market in 2008:

• SAP (23.8%)
• SAS Institute (14.6%)
• Oracle (14.6%)
• IBM (11.3%)
• Microsoft (7.7%)
• MicroStrategy (3.2%)
• Other (24.7%)

Optimize The SAP With Solutions "Network Application Services" Cisco

On June 30, during a seminar on Cisco solutions to optimization and application acceleration, we dealt with the presence of SAP solutions that are more specific to this environment.

Cisco provides networking solutions for optimizing access to applications such as SAP. This network architecture provides a business transformation practical applications by allowing the centralization of resources in consolidated data centers, while providing remote users use fluid bricks Application of SAP. This architecture allows for improved application performance, improved availability and increased security while reducing operating costs.

Oracle, SAP Up And Down

The figures come out, and Oracle announced a net profit up 35% to 1.03 billion for its third quarter compared to last year (for a 27% increase in revenue to 4.41 billion dollars). These results have exceeded expectations of analysts and Oracle.

While at the same time, SAP announced a net profit down 16% to 204 million for its first quarter compared to last year (for a 3% drop in revenue to 2.4 billion euros). This decrease is mainly due to falling sales of software by 33% to 418 million euros.

Governance To Discover For SAP

SAP will have to address potential conflicts of interest between its partners and its own ambitions. Asked about possible differences between players in the market and SAP, on the occasion of a new version could literally wiped off the map all the partners who offer a process covered by the basic package, the head is reassuring: We think in fact in this case, For example we might offer our partners a new commitment to 12 months forcing us not to launch the process directly competing offers. This is a point still under consideration.

The next update of SAP ByDesign, version 2.5, is expected in the third quarter of 2009. It will be the first to benefit from a global launch. However, it must wait until 2010 to witness the launch of the bid cloud of SAP.

SAP Preparing A Cloud To Expand Its SaaS Offering

On the model of Salesforce's, SAP is developing its cloud offering to create and support an ecosystem of partners around its ERP for SME, SAP Business ByDesign. It was during a European event dedicated to SMEs, senior vice president in charge of SAP's strategy of SMEs has missed the information: "We will provide a development environment for SAP Business ByDesign".

Not only it will soon be possible to develop applications for SAP Business ByDesign, but it will run on the platform Saas SAP. Finally, a marketplace will be launched for the publishing partners can market their achievements.

SAP is now on the market for SaaS solutions for SMEs since the launch of SAP Business ByDesign in 2007. If the commercial debut of its ERP system have been difficult, SAP believes more than ever in its offering and recently announced at Sapphire 2009, its version 2.0. An important development in terms of user interface and functionality.

But it was in 2010 that SAP Business ByDesign will know his true revolution. The ERP giant will expand the number of countries where supply is available, but above all he is planning to open its Saas platform to third party publishers. They will publish extensions to Business ByDesign to extend its functional coverage, to meet specific needs, a step he took on Business One, its software package for SMEs.

SAP BI RoadMap

Reporting solutions from Business Objects as a basis for future development (WebIntelligence, Crystal Xcelsius, Voyager). The best of Business Explorer Analyzer will be combined to create the future analysis tool, "Pioneer" for 2010.

The Enterprise Data Warehouse from BW will be developed, as well as tools such as Data Integrator, BI-Accelerator and Visual Composer. Chances to integrated planning will always be developed and integrated end to PCB, if you believe the information from informal development. Other solutions are maintained and continue to be delivered with NetWeaver for 8 years, but will no longer be developed: Business Explorer Analyzer, Web Application Designer.

Two offers now exist simultaneously: The basic package (equivalent to 7.0 BW) and the premium package includes the basic package and solutions BO.

Offer "Financial Performance Management" provides solutions that are reminiscent of the perimeter of SEM but with an ergonomic and user autonomy never reached (BPC, SSM, PCM ...). Through these ads, SAP, with its technical and functional expertise, intends to use its position as world leader in the BI offer a combination of the "best of both worlds."

What Effects For Microsoft?

It is the first time a major publisher announced that it reduces the wing in the coveted field of Business Intelligence, which all analysts are predicting it will be one of the main engines of growth information. This perspective is also the origin of concentrations, including the acquisition of Business Objects by SAP is one of the most prominent.

While Microsoft continues to invest and develop its offering integrated BI SQL Server, which is experiencing strong gains in market share. The withdrawal of PerformancePoint however, may have unexpected effects.

First, competition is very strong in this area, all editors have made sure to offer tenders related to performance management, and more or less integrated into their business intelligence solutions in the strict sense. Microsoft's argument on the clarity of its roadmap and integration of its offerings can no longer play. It remains as arguments the quality of supply, integration with MS Office or low cost to meet strict reporting and analysis. The first risk for Microsoft is losing potential customers attracted by publishers making an offer wider and designed to evolve.

Nevertheless, it is certain that the market share of Microsoft in the field of Business Intelligence will continue to grow. Customers wishing to implement a BalancedScorecard or structured budget process will likely appeal to publishers of complementary solutions, which began to appear after the announcement of Microsoft. This is where SAP may play the card BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation). Indeed, the solution ex-Outlooksoft bought in 2007, and ever developed, based on the integrated Microsoft SQL platform. True to its logical platform, NetWeaver version (integrated BW) will be released this year.

It is therefore ironic that this decision makes SAP the publisher natural solution planning integrated Microsoft BI offering. This would enable SAP to gain a foothold in new customers and extend a little more dominance in this area.

Managing Permissions Roles To The SAP Users

Managing permissions in SAP NetWeaver BI can restrict user access. These limitations apply to both the possible actions (or launch a state change, etc.), functional domains available (represented by cubes), and the scope of analysis (such society, country, etc.).

In general, the assignment of permissions to users is not direct but passes through objects called "Roles". Indeed, a role for combining users, permissions and menus. It is often too complex to assign and track users directly with permissions because the number of combinations to process and lack of user-friendly graphical interface.

Thus, the role will bring together a set of users with the same need analysis, a user can belong to multiple roles. A user assigned to a role can run the state and access to performance indicators.

The Management Organization:

A solution exists yet in SAP NetWeaver BI, to assign positions and not users. This feature allows you to manage a hierarchy of positions and assign users to those positions, according to the reporting period. This management can be supported by human resources in ERP, and duplicated in all systems, or run directly into BW.

Positions are assigned to roles and not directly to users. A change in position does not require changing the allocations to authorities: the user automatically inherits the permissions associated with his position.

From a technical standpoint, the tree management positions and organizations can be achieved by the transaction PPOCW. The positions are then assigned to roles in the transaction PFCG (for extended), in the "User" button and "Organizational Mgt". The assignment of the user's position is performed by the transaction SU01.

The Security Risks Factors:

This system provides general satisfaction because it simplifies the assignment in the original draft. However, it has a major drawback: it merges the individual and the position it occupies in the organization. Maintenance requires translating the actual position of the user roles to provide the necessary permissions.

However, permission management is rarely managed by human resources, but directly between business and IT services. This produces long-term some complexity in the permissions, or a lack of visibility and gaps for authorization. A recent study moreover demonstrated that among the risks in poorly managed companies are primarily the fault of security.

Server Visualization Benefits For Businesses

The idea of this concept rests on the possibility of dispersing an information system infrastructure around the world. So, shared computing power and memory of computers and servers located anywhere in the world. These virtual resources are linked through the Internet and thus created a huge computer network and scalable. This computing can be dissociated from one approach to SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture).

The computing power and storage of information is offered as an on-demand service, companies no longer need to own servers so it could cause a reduction in investment of computer equipment. In case of failure or incident, a virtual server can be moved almost instantly. The material is then shared.

The de-materialization of material adds another dimension. The engine power is optimized in the sense that if a deterioration of response time to a server, it is possible to switch dynamically to a physically more powerful machine, see if need to go through another provider.

The advantages for the user:

With this concept, information systems are considered a service, the user now has more concern for the operating systems. The agility and flexibility of this service allows the user to have full power and high availability of information it wishes in a timely manner without spending unnecessarily high costs in units of power and storage misused as we can do with computers owned enterprises.

SAP Web Applications Runs

Once the applications are built, it is possible to execute in the SAP Portal which particularly in management of business roles and access rights. It is also possible to run the Web Dynpro in on-line mode on mobile. To migrate an interface "PC" to interface "Mobile", it should only adjust the interface.

Some things to remember about the architecture development NWDI (Netweaver Development Infrastructure). It built around several components:

• CBS - (This is the part that will build your archive)
• CMS - (This is the part that will transport components of your environment to another)
• DTR - (Which is the repository will store your developments and manage the version)
• LTC - (It is here that you will define your configuration and WAS systems, use ECC)

NWDS (Netweaver Development Studio): This is the development environment, it is actually an eclipse of SAP, i.e., it incorporates all IDEs necessary for the proper development of WD's.

SAP WORLD

SAP offers through the SAP NetWeaver platform all the components necessary to build a Web application and its exposure mode Intranet or Internet. SAP provides various tools for developing user interface WEB application.

• Web Dynpro - ABAP: Web Dynpro proposes a model of modeling language (metamodel) for the uniform construction of all user interface that accelerates development. Web Dynpro strictly separates the presentation layer and business data (MVC). SAP Web Dynpro technology communicates with Adobe Flex / Flash and allows the construction of interfaces 2.0.


• Web Dynpro - JAVA: The major differences with the version of ABAP, The development environment is not the same one side Java based on NWDI and NWDS unlike the WD ABAP it is via the SE80, Access to data is native.


• VISUAL COMPOSER: Visual Composer allows you to compose applications without requiring to code. Ergonomics is based on standard flash libraries. The possibilities of implementations are limited to the models provided by SAP.


• BSP - HTMLB: This technology combines the ABAP programming languages, HTML and javascript. It is very open and allows all the creative liberties on SAP WebAS. It is possible to develop using the MVC but not an obligation. The technology exists on installer's. It is to recommend for further development of a Web application on SAP.

Trends In The Evolution Of Business Intelligence

First, publishers trend to provide users with greater autonomy. From a DataWarehouse structured, each user must construct its statements independently. This concerns the reporting and additional applications such as budgeting. This trend is not without risk (inconsistent statements, management of entitlements, performance, no "single vision of truth" ...) but meets a real need from users.

Then, business intelligence has long been isolated from other applications because it was using specific tools. The user prefers yet have access to only one application giving everything, be it ERP, Mails, BI, etc.. These include that the proposed SOA including Visual Composer, a development tool (included in NetWeaver) that allows to build composite web applications. Thus, a user can fully analyze data from BW, place an order, read their emails and follow a work flow within a single page. Each page element is interacting with others.

Other trends include a special performance optimization of restitution by storing data from Data Warehouse (BI-Accelerator, BusinessObjects Explorer), the application of BI to non-quantitative data (social networks analysis text search on documents, etc.) and the arrival of BI solutions as SaaS (Software As A Service On-Demand, etc.).

Finally, we observe growing importance of the dimension "trade" in the draft decision. This was illustrated by the purchase of BO by SAP, and Hyperion by Oracle.

The Future Of Business Intelligence

The needs for business to know their environment and to identify opportunities and risks has given rise to practices of economic intelligence. Analyze the legal, fiscal, geopolitical, financial and especially trading is widespread. Now it combines the concept of risk management, which is a natural extension.

Business intelligence is a simplified yet vital economic intelligence. It is to monitor the performance of business processes, and compare them to the market (benchmark) and predetermined objectives (budget). For example, we wish to know the growth of a market segment and compare it to competitors.

Often there is confusion between the practices and objectives of business intelligence and tools to implement to achieve this. Indeed, monitor performance requires first to be able to collect raw data, wherever they are, and present them to users in the form that suits them to the best. The business intelligence tools fulfill this task, and there are usually three levels:

• Data collection and processing into usable information is provided by ETL (extraction, transformation, loading).
• Storage and modeling in a form compatible with the tools of recovery are provided by the DataWarehouse
• The return on the screen of the user reporting tools - dashboards, analysis in Excel or in Web reports in a list, etc.

BI solution without the need for analysis is covered by static states reporting to the ERP or by statements prepared manually in Excel, which have many disadvantages (preparation time, errors, cumbersome files, no sharing, no access self-service, etc.).

Business Intelligence is booming is because companies have realized the need to provide all the latest information and more personalized as possible. Knowledge of information is a condition of performance and survival in a complex and highly competitive.

Integration Into SAP Portal

The Integration Kit provides a planned iView to display content BOE. It is easy to embed Crystal Reports, Travel, Web Intelligence and Xcelsius. Simply choose the iView "Standard BusinessObjects Enterprise Report" and the ID information of the BOE report.

The integration kit can also enrich the Knowledge Management Portal SAP. A new menu bar is been added and allows the creation of new documents Voyager, Web Intelligence, or even display MyInfoview as would a user from the portal Infoview BOE.

This feature facilitates the centralized management of security. Portal Business Objects Enterprise important roles and users of SAP. Upon connection, BOE check authorizations in the SAP system to allow access to the user reporting.

This does not set the proper permissions to BOE, but to leave the SAP server to verify the existence of the user.

The SAP Integration Kit has been developed by Business Objects before its acquisition by SAP. The aim was to give the possibility to use the BW data in each tool. As you can see, the solution depends on the tool (through the universe generated from a query Bex, by direct use of query Bex by webservice, etc.). The future of SAP's flagship tool in multivariate analysis. Scheduled for 2010, this tool based on a combination of Voyager (analysis mode Web BO) and Bex Analyzer (Excel analysis of SAP) and can directly read a cube SAP BI or any other non-SAP data.

SAP NW Resumes All Technologies

SAP NetWeaver resume all technologies and strategies:

• Business Services - (Pre-packaged, Business Packages, Web ...)
• Standards and open technology - (industry standards, interoperability, industry standard ...)
• ABAP and JAVA technologies - (SAP kernel, portal, eCommerce, services and developments)
• Security - (Identity, authorization, encryption, SSO, Network Security ...)
• Internationalization - (multilingual adaptation process to the country, legal obligations ...)
• Interoperability with market tools - (Microsoft. NET, IBM WebSphere ...)
• Monitoring and Diagnostics environments - (BI Solution Manager and Alerting, Monitoring ...)

This unique platform for application integration to unify and to exploit synergies between people, processes, information (structured and unstructured) and ensures a better infrastructure management SAP share the same base (MySAP Business Suite, SAP CRM, SAP SRM, SAP ECC ...).

SAP NetWeaver Offers

SAP NetWeaver is the technical platform upon which is common to all of the applications offer SAP Business Suite. It includes an offer of Process Integration EAI / ESB (SAP PI), an offer of Business Intelligence (SAP BI ), offers a Master Data Management (SAP MDM) offers a portal (SAP EP) and offering mobility. This base is open to industry standards and delivers SAP solutions to be interoperable with other environments and technical applications (eg: Microsoft. NET, Sun Java EE, IBM WebSphere, Oracle / BEA).

• Finally, SAP Netweaver provides enterprises a robust and stable foundation for SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) by providing a particular integrated development environment for building composite applications.