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Gartner Report that outlines how China will remain the worlds fastest growing Enterprise Software Market through 2013. Areas of high growth will include On Demand ERP and data integration soltions

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How the IBM/Air Force Cyber Security Cloud will help remove lingering thoughts about Cloud security.

Virtualization and Cloud Jobs on the Rise
Great article from Steve Jin that reviews what Virtualization and Cloud Jobs are hot at at the moment and the projected demand for Cloud related jobs in the future.

This is part one of a two part series on customer experiences with SAP’s Business ByDesign. 2 years in the making; Business ByDesign (BBD) is currently on Feature Pack 1.11 (Feature Pack 2.0 is due to be released soon) and there are approximately 100 customers live in North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific.

During the recent  Sapphire 09 conference in Orlando, I had opportunity to meet with SAP Business ByDesign Senior executives in addition to a number of Business ByDesign Charter Customers.

One of the more recent Charter Customers is OneVision Solutions; headquartered in Irving, Texas. OneVision Solutions specializes in the consultation, sales, and implementation of advanced videoconferencing communication solutions, training and services. OneVision Solution’s revenue has increased exponentially since its inception in 2004 and the company is expanding rapidly into new territories and markets across the United States.

OneVision Solutions CFO Brent Walters discussed his firms reasons for selecting SAP’s Business ByDesign and his experience to date with utilizing an On Demand ERP solution:

OnDemand Beat – “What other integrated On Demand Financial Suites did OneVision explore before selecting Business ByDesign”

Brent Walters – “We didn’t have any other On Demand Financial Suites on the table, only an on premise ERP solution, which would have worked and provided the majority of our requirements, however, fell short on cost, maintenance, flexibility, reporting, etc….”

OnDemand Beat – “Was the evaluation process the same as for a traditional packaged ERP solution (with on site visits and mapping of functionality from the legacy system to the new system) or was the process more streamlined for Business ByDesign?”

Brent Walters- “Pre-sales with BBD went very smoothly and was a very collaborative approach between OneVision Solutions and the Business Solutions Manager. I think it was very beneficial to have the BBD Project Manager involved from day one, that way the direction of the solution was known by all of the key players.”

OnDemand Beat – “How long did it take for OneVision to implement Business ByDesign?”

Brent Walters – We did a 60% full ERP solution in 2 months, which required approximately 25 to 50% of my time and one other employee of OneVision Solutions, so we were still able to run the day to day operations.”

OnDemand Beat – “At the Sapphire conference you mentioned that OneVision has saved 35% on implementation and hardware costs and projects 45% annual savings on annual maintenance and labor costs using Business ByDesign versus packaged ERP. As your usage of Business ByDesign increases over time do you anticipate your firms annual savings will increase to more than 45%?”

Brent Walters- ” Most definitely, simply because the packaged ERP option was for 4 licenses or 8 concurrent users, with BBD, we have 25 licenses, so when we bring all of the sales staff into BBD we have the capacity with no additional cost, compared to having to purchase additional licenses for the packaged ERP. Also, once we roll out the sales functionality to the sales staff, we will terminate our contract with SalesForce.com, therefore, providing additional savings to the bottom line.”

OnDemand Beat – “What core features of Business ByDesign is OneVision using at this point?”

Brent Walters- “We are currently using CRM (50% for sales), FIN (100% for financials), SRM (100% for purchasing) and HRM (50% for Human Resources). Once we convert over to Feature Pack 2.0 in BBD, we will use the SCM for the drop ship functionality and more of the CRM for services.”

OnDemand Beat – “Were there any major extensions that OneVision had to implement to go live with Business ByDesign?”

Brent Walters – “I wouldn’t say that we had any considerable extensions or work around issues, with the exception of implementing our  drop ship processes into the current BBD system.”

OnDemand Beat – “How does having an integrated On Demand ERP system improve your close process?”

Brent Walters- ” The close process was pretty much nailed down in our prior system and we have been able to implement our processes with little issues, so we are still closing within 2 to 3 days.”

OnDemand Beat – “Has it been easier with Business ByDesign to create custom reports and if so are those done in house at this point?”

Brent Walters – “There really is no need for “custom reports” since the reporting function is setup in a cube environment, we are able to move information around quite easily and retrieve valuable information from the existing reports.”

OnDemand Beat – “You mentioned that ERP is not a cure all and that there are still a few spreadsheets and workarounds in place at OneVision. What is some of the functionality that OneVision plans to roll out in the future to address the remaining workarounds and spreadsheets?”

Brent Walters – “Once we convert to BBD Feature Pack 2.0, the spreadsheets will go away, because the drop ship functionality will provide the visibility that is currently being done in the offline spreadsheets.”

OnDemand Beat – “What advice would you have for other financial and company executives who are evaluating and implementing On Demand ERP solutions?”

Brent Walters – “Understand your current processes and have a good idea as to where you want to go with an ERP solution, otherwise it is easy to run down a rabbit hole and become boxed in to a solution that won’t work.”

One of the more interesting solutions I saw at the September SAP TechEd was SAP Discovery System For Enterprise SOA.

SAP Discovery System is a preconfigured bundled development environment that allow users to create composite SOA applications in a sandbox environment using technologies such as Netweaver, master data management and business intelligence.

SAP partners Fujitsu and HP offer the Discovery System and the environment is composed of the following software and development components:

• SAP® ERP application
• Enterprise services
• SAP NetWeaver® technology platform
• Web Dynpro development environment
• SAP Solution Manager application management solution
• SAP GRC Access Control application
• SAP xApp™ Manufacturing Integration & Intelligence application
• SAP solutions for RFID
• SAP GRC Global Trade Services application
• MaxDB database
• SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio tool
• SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer tool
• Adobe Lifecycle Designer
• ABAP™ programming language workbench

The true value of the Discovery System seems to be in the demo business scenarios and exercises that are included in the system like:

• Customer Fact Sheet
• Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment
• Global Trade Services
• Permit Process Scenario
• Service-Enabled Procurement Scenario
• SAP RFID Solution
• Telco Dealer Returns Scenario
• RMA Processing Scenario

These scenarios and demos are bundled with a snapshot of SAP’s Enterprise Services Workspace and allow users to browse and test SAP’s enterprise services and scenario’s.  In addition many industry specific SOA test cases are available including scenarios for Banking, Telecommunications, Aerospace and Public Sector.

Itai Sadan, Program Manager for the SAP SOA Discovery System answered a few questions for the OnDemand Beat about Discovery System.

OnDemand Beat –  ”Is SAP Discovery System meant to be used in a production environment or is it more of a starting point for prototyping and development?”

Itai Sadan – “It is a sandbox that is intended for evaluation and prototyping only. It is not to be used as a production environment both because it would not be the recommendation of SAP to install all software components on a single server for production use and because the licensing doesn’t permit it.”

OnDemand Beat - “Can SAP NetWeaver and SOA Discovery System be used to integrate data from both SAP and NON SAP systems such as Oracle or Siebel? If so where is the repository of data kept?”

Itai Sadan – “The answer is yes and many companies integrate non-SAP components into the Discovery System. The data is kept in the MaxDB database.”

OnDemand Beat - ”What vertical industries has SAP seen the most adoption of SAP Discovery System?”

Itai Sadan – “We built the Discovery system to be used by all industries. Our business scenarios are mostly industry agnostic. For example, one demo is called SOA Procurement Scenario. It is a very simplified look at the world of procurement where a sales order is received and then due to low stock the company has to purchase the missing items from its suppliers in order to fulfill the demand. There is also a step where a purchasing agent requests authorization from his manager to create a purchase order. This is a very general business scenario the almost any company can relate to. Our main goal was to showcase the use of the SAP technologies and SOA architecture best practices.”

OnDemand Beat – “What components of SAP Discovery System are available on the SAP Developer Network?”

Itai Sadan – “The Discovery system as a whole is sold solely by our technology partners HP and Fujitsu. On SDN you can find the documentation that explains how to setup the server after you buy it, how to run the demo scenarios, exercises and how-to guides.”

OnDemand Beat – “Will SAP Discovery System be updated in the future with configurations for SAP Business ByDesign?”

Itai Sadan – “We are always interested in adding new components to the Discovery system as they become available. You can see it by looking at the new components that had been added in the Discovery System v3 compared to the previous version 2. The main driver for choosing which components will be added is the requests we gather from our customers. Business ByDesign is an option although currently we are more focused on the software that is being used in the large enterprises.”

OnDemand Beat – “What is the next step typically for companies that have mastered SAP Discovery System?”

Itai Sadan – “Our goal is that customers will have a good experience using the software on the Discovery System and then decide to go into production with that software or do a proof-of-concept.”

Mindtouch announced today a new version of its Opensource collaboration and collective intelligence platform. The new version of Mindtouch Deki, “Kilen Woods” introduces new data connection and enterprise integration tools to what is already a very robust Wiki platform.

Aaron Fulkerson, co-founder and CEO, said that:

“MindTouch Deki has evolved into a powerful platform that is the connective tissue for integrating disparate enterprise systems, web services, and Web 2.0 applications, and enables real-time collaboration and collective intelligence – dynamic data collection and application integration.”

New Enterprise Adapters introduced in MindTouch Deki include adapters for:

• SugarCRM
• Salesforce
• LinkedIn
• MySQL
• Microsoft SQL Server, Access and Microsoft ADO.NET
• VisiFire
• PrinceXML
• ThinkFree Office
• WordPress

This new functionality helps MindTouch Deki jump to the front in terms of competing Wiki Platforms as now within a single platform users can create mashups, dashboards, reports etc from within the Wiki interface. This type of enterprise integration will make Wiki’s (if more Wiki platforms are able to catch up with MindTouch and add this type of integration in the future) an easier sell for companies as integration with existing applications is always at the top of the list of wanted features.

MindTouch Deki also differentiates itself from other Wiki platforms in that its existing feature set allows drag and drop in a GUI interface for most of its functionality. This makes adoption within a company a lot easier than other wiki tools in that users do not have to learn html markup etc to create content.

Will be interesting to see if MindTouch can build upon the list of current adapters with integration for high end ERP (SAP, Oracle etc) and CRM (Seible) applications.  MindTouch Deki “Kilen Woods” should be available for download by the end of July

In the three months since I posted an initial Review of Business ByDesign in the OnDemand Beat, there has been a flurry of announcements and activity relating to the roll out date of the product.

Larry Dignan and Dennis Howlett broke the news the week before the annual SAP Sapphire event, that the planned 2009 rollout of Business ByDesign was to be delayed by up to 18 months.

Vinnie Mirchandani and a few of the other Enterprise Irregulars had a chance to meet with SAP Co-CEO’s Henning Kagermann and Leo Apotheker at Sapphire 08 and found out that there were a couple of key reasons why SAP pulled back on the original planned release date.

These are valid reasons indeed to delay Business ByDesign’s launch and might in this case actually help lead to a better product.

But in the meantime one can be certain that Netsuite (with its recent OneWorld release) and other OnDemand ERP competitors wont sit still during the next 18 months and SAP will have quite a bit more work to do to gain market share and partner acceptance of Business ByDesign once released.

Business ByDesign will allow SAP to cover the entire gamut of customers sizes and will complement SAP Business Suite, SAP Business All-in-One and SAP Business One.

Business ByDesign will be priced at $149 per month per user with a minimum of 25 licensed users. The monthly subscription pricing is all inclusive and includes infrastructure, product support service and upgrades.  

Business process functionality includes financials, CRM, executive management support, financials, human capital management, project management, supplier relationship management, supply chain management, compliance management and integration with Microsoft Office.

Business ByDesign runs Netweaver; a smart move in that SAP partners and customers can access all the SAP Enterprise Repository.  Netweaver will also allow SAP partners to extend Business ByDesign by developing vertical industry applications utilizing SOA and technologies such as IBM WebSphere, Java EE and Microsoft.Net.

Just like SAP Business All In One and SAP Business One; Business ByDesign utilizes T-Rex and Max DB, thus eliminating dependence on SQL server, Oracle or DB2 databases.

Business ByDesign is a pure On Demand solution; but is not multi-tenant, unlike Netsuite, Salesforce or the smaller On Demand ERP competitors. Also the early versions on Business ByDesign are a bit short on Enterprise 2.0 features such as Mash-Up support and Web 2.0 User Interface features.

Business ByDesign is expected to have general availability in the first half of 2008 and SAP estimates 1000 customers will be live by mid 2009.

Update 8 May 2008 – Since I posted this review of Business ByDesign there have been a number of announcements relating to the availability date of the product…..