SAP: The History
SAP has long been the kingpin in the ERP world. With probably the most broad set of features, a large marketing machine, and a subsequent reputation as "the big solution for the big players," SAP has dominated in the ERP space for large corporations. Rightfully so based on technology. Their downside has always been their approachability, cost, long implementation and training times, and less-than-simple product upgrades.
SAP Crosses the Chasm
Trying to determine just when, and even why, the major power players at SAP decided to almost turn the company on its head by opening itself up to alliances, absorbing other companies' technologies through acquisitions, and even opening up its software to work friendlier with other, non-SAP software components, is difficult to pin down. But that is just what it has done. SAP's new tagline is "mySAP.com: Solutions for the New, New Economy - The Integrated E-Business Platform for Any Industry." This is the SAP, for all its warts and thorns, that we have grown to know and love? No. They have crossed a strategic chasm, embracing the Internet while embracing partners and competitors alike, and there seems to be no turning back. Witness just some of their actions:
April 2000 - SAP AG and Microsoft announce the intention to bring mySAP.com functionality to Microsoft's Pocket PC platform. "SAP is furthering mySAP.com to empower people working on customer relationships with key information they need on mobile devices, including the Pocket PC," said Peter Zencke, member of the executive board, SAP AG.
May 2000 - SAP announces a strategic alliance with Nortel Networks to develop and integrate industry-specific customer interaction solutions that will extend the scope of collaborative customer relationship management (CRM). With the agreement, SAP would embed Clarify's eFrontOffice CRM functionality into its mySAP.com offering. In a statement coinciding with the agreement, Peter Zencke, comments: "Enabling collaborative virtual communities of companies to present one face to their joint customers, SAP and Nortel Networks will deliver a new quality in customer relationship management." The agreement would enable mySAP.com to present customers with multi-channel (Web, phone, fax) access to a company's Customer Interaction Center (CIC). The agreement would also bolster a company's ability to share information amongst and between it's employees, customers, suppliers, and partners with tie-ins to SAP's Supply Chain Management (SCM) functionality to create "a holistic circle of commerce."
May 2000 - SAP and Nokia jointly announce development agreements to WAP (Wireless Access Protocol)-enable mySAP.com components, so that information can be viewed on any WAP-enabled device, such as certain high-end cell phones from Nokia and other cell phone manufacturers.
May 2000 - At the company's yearly international conference, SAPPHIRE, the company announced that they were going to establish an integration center in the United States , to be opened in late 2000, to build "preintegrated, preassembled, SAP-certified, SAP-supported, multi-vendor functionality that fuses mySAP.com and leading third-party applications into an overall solution that best meets customer needs."
June 2000 - The announcement of mySAP.com Dynamic Procurement, a pro-active system that automates the procurement process for direct materials and includes strategic sourcing and contract management. SAP claimed the system is able to dynamically match supply to demand via real-time processing across the Internet.
June 2000 - SAP enters the online marketplace arena with mySAP Marketplaces, an Internet-based solution designed to integrate front- and back-office systems of all participants in marketplaces, maintaining data integrity with so-called end-to-end integration with participating companies' internal systems. Interpreted, this solution is the equivalent of providing to companies not only an XML platform, but also the definition of the words in the language, for two databases to communicate, and it also intends to build the integration between the two pieces, something other marketplaces, or inter-company communication technologies, do not do. And they plan to do this on a grand scale.
June 2000 - Introduction of the Internet-Business Framework to support open integration strategies. Under the plan, mySAP.com's Workplace enterprise portal would be the common, web-browser-based interface between disparate systems. Beneath the covers, the systems would be linked at the application layer through XML, SAP's own Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPI's), XML Common Business Library (xCBL), as well as support for Biztalk and RosettaNet XML standard language dictionaries.
SAP has long been the kingpin in the ERP world. With probably the most broad set of features, a large marketing machine, and a subsequent reputation as "the big solution for the big players," SAP has dominated in the ERP space for large corporations. Rightfully so based on technology. Their downside has always been their approachability, cost, long implementation and training times, and less-than-simple product upgrades.
SAP Crosses the Chasm
Trying to determine just when, and even why, the major power players at SAP decided to almost turn the company on its head by opening itself up to alliances, absorbing other companies' technologies through acquisitions, and even opening up its software to work friendlier with other, non-SAP software components, is difficult to pin down. But that is just what it has done. SAP's new tagline is "mySAP.com: Solutions for the New, New Economy - The Integrated E-Business Platform for Any Industry." This is the SAP, for all its warts and thorns, that we have grown to know and love? No. They have crossed a strategic chasm, embracing the Internet while embracing partners and competitors alike, and there seems to be no turning back. Witness just some of their actions:
April 2000 - SAP AG and Microsoft announce the intention to bring mySAP.com functionality to Microsoft's Pocket PC platform. "SAP is furthering mySAP.com to empower people working on customer relationships with key information they need on mobile devices, including the Pocket PC," said Peter Zencke, member of the executive board, SAP AG.
May 2000 - SAP announces a strategic alliance with Nortel Networks to develop and integrate industry-specific customer interaction solutions that will extend the scope of collaborative customer relationship management (CRM). With the agreement, SAP would embed Clarify's eFrontOffice CRM functionality into its mySAP.com offering. In a statement coinciding with the agreement, Peter Zencke, comments: "Enabling collaborative virtual communities of companies to present one face to their joint customers, SAP and Nortel Networks will deliver a new quality in customer relationship management." The agreement would enable mySAP.com to present customers with multi-channel (Web, phone, fax) access to a company's Customer Interaction Center (CIC). The agreement would also bolster a company's ability to share information amongst and between it's employees, customers, suppliers, and partners with tie-ins to SAP's Supply Chain Management (SCM) functionality to create "a holistic circle of commerce."
May 2000 - SAP and Nokia jointly announce development agreements to WAP (Wireless Access Protocol)-enable mySAP.com components, so that information can be viewed on any WAP-enabled device, such as certain high-end cell phones from Nokia and other cell phone manufacturers.
May 2000 - At the company's yearly international conference, SAPPHIRE, the company announced that they were going to establish an integration center in the United States , to be opened in late 2000, to build "preintegrated, preassembled, SAP-certified, SAP-supported, multi-vendor functionality that fuses mySAP.com and leading third-party applications into an overall solution that best meets customer needs."
June 2000 - The announcement of mySAP.com Dynamic Procurement, a pro-active system that automates the procurement process for direct materials and includes strategic sourcing and contract management. SAP claimed the system is able to dynamically match supply to demand via real-time processing across the Internet.
June 2000 - SAP enters the online marketplace arena with mySAP Marketplaces, an Internet-based solution designed to integrate front- and back-office systems of all participants in marketplaces, maintaining data integrity with so-called end-to-end integration with participating companies' internal systems. Interpreted, this solution is the equivalent of providing to companies not only an XML platform, but also the definition of the words in the language, for two databases to communicate, and it also intends to build the integration between the two pieces, something other marketplaces, or inter-company communication technologies, do not do. And they plan to do this on a grand scale.
June 2000 - Introduction of the Internet-Business Framework to support open integration strategies. Under the plan, mySAP.com's Workplace enterprise portal would be the common, web-browser-based interface between disparate systems. Beneath the covers, the systems would be linked at the application layer through XML, SAP's own Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPI's), XML Common Business Library (xCBL), as well as support for Biztalk and RosettaNet XML standard language dictionaries.
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