SAP vows to unravel user snarl-up over software licensing
SAP is "actively discussing" ways to make its software licensing easier to understand, the software giant has told The Reg.
A spokesperson for SAP, the world’s largest maker of business software, said it plans to announce specifics “shortly.”
SAP didn’t provide any more details, but the statement follows a damning condemnation of the current state of SAP licensing in a user group survey.
An annual survey of 336 SAP users in 150 user organisations found near-universal dissatisfaction with confusing and expensive pricing.
SAP is expected to unveil the changes at next month's UK and Ireland User Group conference in Manchester.
Users in the group's survey called on SAP to introduce a licensing holiday, to let them park unused licences they’ve paid for, and for SAP to publish a clear price list. Read more...
SAP unveils HANA-powered cloud-based performance management apps
SAP on Monday is set to unveil a line of cloud-based EPM (enterprise performance management) applications that run on top of its HANA in-memory database platform.
EPM software is a subset of the broader BI (business intelligence) market, honing in on areas such as planning, forecasting and other financial topics. SAP released a major new version of its EPM suite last year, and in March, made an initial link between HANA and EPM with a new application for budgeting, planning and consolidation.
The new EPM OnDemand applications include capabilities for "expense insight," allowing managers to probe into the details of expenses and fix errors; real-time analysis of profit and loss; and capital project planning, according to a statement.
Many more EPM OnDemand products will be released in coming months, said Bryan Katis, group vice president and general manager for EPM solutions management. Read more...
Achtung Penguin! SUSE tunes up Linux for SAP
It seems natural enough that SUSE Linux and SAP would be technical allies; both hail from Germany and both try to peddle business-grade software to enterprises. SAP, which has a huge installed base of Windows customers and a considerable number of Unix customers, cannot be seen to be playing favorites with its OS suppliers just because of nationalism. But it cannot stop – and would not stop – SUSE Linux, the commercial Linux distributor now owned by Attachmate, from making optimizations to its OS stack that make SAP apps run better.
SUSE Linux and SAP cosied up their respective technical support organizations five years ago, and started making tweaks to the SLES stack shortly thereafter on an informal basis, with SLES 10 and the SAP FastTrack installation tool. Read more...
SAP looking to create ‘distinguished engineers’ for its HANA database
SAP is creating a new program that seeks to anoint consultants as "distinguished engineers" working with its HANA in-memory database platform, the company announced Monday.
About 1,800 consultants have already received HANA training since its general release one year ago. But the new program will provide a deeper level of engagement with SAP, according to an official blog post.
"SAP will support this organization by providing HANA briefings, development and roadmap updates, access to resources, and joint coordination of activities at conferences and other virtual and in-person technical events," the blog states. In addition, SAP will solicit experts' input "regarding real-world HANA implementation experiences to use as input to guide development and product management for future patches and releases."
The program is also meant to help top HANA experts share their knowledge and experiences, according to the blog. Criteria for membership in the Distinguished Engineer Program will be released soon, it adds. Read more...
SAP community portal launch date unclear due to bugs
Serious technical problems that have delayed the rollout of an upgrade to SAP's community portal are persisting, to the point where the company is no longer specifying a launch date.
In December, SAP announced that the launch of the new SAP Community Network, originally planned for that month, would be pushed forward to early this year due to various technical problems.
"Since then, while all of us have been working on the new platform, I've been publicly quiet on the launch topic, since the news changed daily as progress was made on one front, and new issues were uncovered on other fronts, and I didn't want to set a new date or new expectations and not be fully confident of living up to them," said Mark Yolton, senior vice president of SAP communities and social media, in a blog post late Friday. "I think it's time now to provide you an update and to explain what you can expect, and when." Read more...
SAP’s HANA in-memory database will run ERP this year
SAP plans to roll out support for the ERP module within its flagship Business Suite product family on the HANA in-memory database platform in the fourth quarter of this year, executive board member and technology chief Vishal Sikka said in an interview Wednesday.
The vendor had previously stated its intention to support Business Suite on HANA, a move that would pave the way for SAP application-customer defections from rival Oracle's database, but until now no specific date had been made public.
"It's a bold statement to say they can do this by Q4," said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research. "If they can do this, it means they've solved a lot of the technical issues with HANA. This means they have the beginning of a next-gen platform for their apps." Read more...
SAP reports its best year ever
SAP said Wednesday that it had exceeded its guidance for revenue and profit in 2011, its best year in its 40-year history, and was positioned to exceed its revenue target of €20 billion ($26 billion) in 2015.
The company said it expects full-year 2012 non-IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) software and software-related service revenue to grow in the range of 10 to 12 percent at constant currencies, with its proposed acquisition of SuccessFactors contributing up to two percentage points.
SAP said it had significant momentum going into 2012.
The $3.4 billion acquisition of SuccessFactors, announced in December, will bring to SAP a range of cloud-based human resources software as well as expertise in the cloud market. The company expects to close the transaction in the first quarter. Read more...
SAP faces cloud strategy questions with SuccessFactors buy
SAP's US$3.4 billion purchase of SuccessFactors not only gives the company an increasingly popular set of on-demand human resources applications, but could also bring its entire cloud software portfolio into a new focus.
The acquisition was announced Saturday and is set to be completed in the first quarter of next year. After it closes, SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard will run the company as a separate division. He has also been tapped to lead SAP's overall cloud business.
Over the past several years, SAP hasn't quite been able to settle on a cloud strategy. The Business ByDesign ERP (enterprise resource planning) suite was pulled back and reworked once the company determined it couldn't make money on it at scale in its original form. ByDesign's target audience has also shifted, with SAP now courting both small and mid-sized businesses as well as divisions of larger companies. Read more...
Google Maps gives SAP’s business intelligence a new direction
SAP and Google have teamed up to bring Google Maps and Google Earth to SAP's business intelligence software.
The idea behind the tie-in is to allow large volumes of data to be presented visually, helping users make quicker decisions based on real-time information.
If businesses know the geographical context of their information, SAP believes they can better understand local, regional and global business trends and how different approaches work in different places. Read more...
SAP co-CEO McDermott talks up HANA, mobility, and SaaS
SAP has seen software sales rebound steadily after a dip during the global recession, and is hoping to supercharge its business with forays into in-memory computing, SaaS (software as a service), and mobile applications, a business it entered with last year's acquisition of Sybase.
While the bulk of SAP's revenues still come from its core business of on-premises ERP (enterprise resource planning) and BI (business intelligence) software, along with associated maintenance fees, it's betting that these new initiatives will transform the company. In an interview with Wednesday before a conference call on SAP's second-quarter earnings report, co-CEO Bill McDermott discussed how the vendor is no longer "the old SAP." Read more...
SAP preps low-cost alternative to Oracle
amazons server could be used for attack on sony
SAP will finish porting its ERP (enterprise resource planning) application to the Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) database later this year, giving customers now running Oracle and other platforms a lower-cost alternative, the company announced Tuesday during the Sapphire conference in Orlando.
Sybase ASE has only a fraction of the database market share held by Oracle, IBM and Microsoft, but it is widely used by financial institutions. SAP noted this in its announcement, saying its ERP customers will now get to use the same database "that powers Wall Street." Read more...
SAP, Dell partner on in-memory and the cloud
SAP and Dell are expanding their relationship in the areas of cloud computing and in-memory databases, the companies will announce on Monday during the Sapphire conference in Orlando.
First off, SAP customers will be able to deploy the applications on Dell's VIS Next Generation Datacenter Platform, which has been bolstered in recent years by acquisitions like storage optimization vendor Ocarina Networks and server provisioning provider Scalent.
SAP and Dell will be joined at Sapphire by a representative of the University of Kentucky, which is moving its SAP implementation to a Dell-managed cloud, said Kaj van de Loo, senior vice president of technology strategy at SAP. Read more...
SAP plans cloud version of HANA
SAP plans to offer a version of its HANA (High-Performance Analytic Appliance) software that will allow customers to upload data to the vendor's own cloud setup for processing, rather than deploy related infrastructure in-house, a senior executive of the company said.
HANA uses an in-memory computing engine, holding data to be processed in main memory for faster processing. This approach is designed to eliminate the need to read data from the database, process it, and then write data back to the database, SAP said. Read more...