By Erika Morphy CRM Buyer Part of the ECT News Network
01/18/08 9:08 AM PT
SAP's revelation of its strategy for integrating Business Objects holds no surprises for industry observers. "It validates the analyst community's impression from the beginning of the merger," said Murray Beach, managing director of TM Capital. "We knew it would create a powerful suite of tools."
On the heels of Oracle's (Nasdaq: ORCL) successful bid to acquire BEA Systems (Nasdaq: BEAS), SAP (NYSE: SAP) has provided the market and its customers with the first wave of products -- nine in total -- developed through its own US$6.78 billion acquisition of Business Objects last year. It has also revealed more details about its plans to integrate its product suite with the French business intelligence vendor's applications.
When the deal was first announced, both firms emphasized the integration goal for users: a platform that allows companies to more easily implement process changes resulting from business decisions and more efficiently execute across organizational lines. In essence, they promised a product suite that would close the loop between strategy and execution.
Fleshed-Out Plans
The two firms are now providing more specifics. The BI platform from SAP and Business Objects will integrate the core technologies in SAP's NetWeaver BI Accelerator with Business Objects' genome in database- and application-agnostic BI capabilities. This will improve performance and analysis capabilities in the duo's performance optimization applications, as well as in customer- and partner-built applications built on Business Objects' enhanced BI platform.
None of these plans surprised the market, Murray Beach, managing director of TM Capital (formerly Boston Corporate Finance), told CRM Buyer. "It validates the analyst community's impression from the beginning of the merger. We knew it would create a powerful suite of tools."
New Products
Following are the nine new products, three of which are for small and medium-sized businesses:
Financial Performance Management (FPM) package: a suite of planning, budgeting, consolidation, and profitability analysis applications;
Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) package: a series of tools to confirm compliance with corporate governance policy;
Visualization and Reporting package: a series of reports and dashboards that can be developed within Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Office;
Enterprise Query, Reporting and Analysis package: extends the Visualization and Reporting package to provide business insight;
Data Integration and Data Quality Management package: Delivers data integration capabilities that manage and clean data from both SAP and non-SAP sources;
Master Data Services package: enables businesses to consolidate, harmonize and centrally manage critical business data; compliant with industry data standards;
SAP Business All-in-One with BusinessObjects Edge Standard package: combines a business process platform designed for the mid to upper-end of the midmarket with a BI offering for small and medium-sized enterprises; it will be available this month from both SAP and BusinessObjects' field organization and channel partners;
Crystal Reports Server package: a reporting application for small and medium-sized businesses; and
BusinessObjects Edge Series package: enhancements include integration for SAP Solutions.
Salesforce.com Releases New Dev Tools, Cloud Computing Support January 17, 2008
Salesforce.com's new utility pricing model is flexible. Users in the accounts payable department, for example, may use expense reporting applications on a daily basis. Thus, they would be more likely to pay for unlimited access. Sales or marketing people, on the other hand, may need to access an expense reporting application just once per month on a per-login basis.
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