SuccessApps: Successfactors and Google Apps
Successfactors (SFSF) recently announced integration into Google Apps (GOOG). I think this is a very important announcement. See what Phil Wainewright has to say about this. Bringing the Web, especially Web 2.0 into the enterprise. SAP, take note.Here is what Successfactors had to say about the integration.
Read MoreThe integration of SuccessFactors’ Performance and Talent Management suite with Google Apps collaborative products and other tools enables enterprises of any and all sizes to reap the benefits of Software as a Service and cloud computing (no hardware or software to download, install or maintain), and extends SuccessFactors’ mission to help companies better manage, motivate and engage their people to drive better business results.
What is SAP Business ByDesign?
SAP has its own TV channel and you can find numerous interesting videos on the SAP-TV website. I found this video describing SAP Business ByDesign. SAP released this video before the recent announcement that they are delaying the launch of Business ByDesign. Also see SAP’s SAPPHIRE 2008 announcement that it will bring SaaS to large companies.
Read MoreBlogs on SAP’s Business ByDesign
My plan was to report in depth on SAP’s Business ByDesign product, however I decided to rather point you to a number of well crafted blogs summarizing the launch.
- My friend Tom Otter provides an insider’s view.
- Bob Warfield writes a great blogs on all things SaaS, and Web 2.0. His BbD summary is very good.
- Jeff Nolan over at Venture Chronicles is always insightful. Another good summary.
- Joshua Greenbaum is another good read.
and for fun check out these:
SAP’s official magazine SAP INFO is also interesting reading. SDN may have some interesting information soon. Not too much at the moment. I still have many open questions:
- How (if at all) will SAP partner regarding BBD? ADP is listed as the only partner.
- Will SAP release an SDK for BBD?
- Will BBD be the end of SAP’s All-in-one and Business One?
Update – Sept 26, 2007: Interesting read on Infoworld.Update – Nov 7, 2007: Kagermann says SAP BBD is not for enterprise customers.Do you have answers?
Read MoreSAP’s A1S launced today and is called: SAP Business ByDesign
SAP officially launched A1S today and it’s called: SAP Business ByDesign. It will cost $149 per user per month. A quick initial review of SAP BBD looks a lot like current self service scenarios and webdynpro transactions. I will do a more detailed review soon.
SAP’s on demand/SaaS ERP solution, codenamed A1S
My aim with this post is to summarize the information currently available on A1S. A1S has been in the works for at least 3 years and is SAP’s on demand or SaaS (Software as a service) ERP solution. According to ZDNet A1S is targeted to launch in 2008 and is part of SAP’s strategy to grow its customer base from 39,000 to 100,000 customers by 2010. SAP is planning to unveil A1S at an event in New York on Sept 19. A1S is designed for the mid-market and initially it will be hosted by SAP as an on demand solution. Later it will be available as an appliance that can be plugged in behind the firewall.Henning Kagermann’s (CEO of SAP AG) recent presentations provide more A1S hints. Here is SAP’s 2007 Q2 analyst presentation and also the May 2007 Sanford Bernstein presentation. On page 26 Kagermann summarizes the salient features of A1S:
- A New Product: Broad cross-industry coverage, enterprise SOA by design, model-based design, configuration via business questions, and self-service & embedded training.
- A New Business Model: Try-Run-Adapt, on demand, embedded services & remote management, order of magnitude lower TCO, and quality/robustness is key.
In this blog post searchSAP talks about SAP’s mid-market push including A1S. Here Venderprisey summarizes some SaaS blog postings including an interesting reference to A1S. The Register and others suggest that SAP picked the Sept date to overlap with the Salesforce Dreamforce conference.Hasso Plattner’s “new idea” presentation is basically the technical underpinnings of A1S. You can see the keynote here, however you’ll have to register first. SAP calls A1S, Enterprise SOA by Design vs SAP ERP it calls Enterprise SOA by Evolution. Here is a list of the new idea aspects of Plattner’s “New Idea”: in-memory databases, real-time analytics, harmonized UI, cloud computing, on-demand, events & triggers, modular deployment, model-based configuration, no code exposed, new markets, community, standards and finally SOA.Competitors include: Salesforce.com and its AppExchange marketplace for on demand applications, Oracle on demand, Netsuite.com and Successfactors.com. Workday, co-founded by Mr. Peoplesoft himself, Dave Duffield, is also an interesting play. They market Workday as: On-Demand Enterprise Business Services.Also see my post regarding integration between SaaS solutions and SAP.I’m sure we’ll know more after September 19.
Read MoreAmazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud – EC2
Amazon and Google are launching some amazing services these days. Amazon’s services include: Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3) and now Flexible Payments Service. These services may be accessed via APIs (web services) and are used by developers to introduce new products and services. Amazon charges a small fee for using their infrastructure and this is a new income stream for them. The solutions catalog lists a number of solutions built on Amazon’s Web services. Interesting solutions include: RightScale.com (instance management), File123.com (file management) and Jungledisk.com (internet backups). The following blog gives a good overview of what EC2 means for entrepreneurs.I think that utility computing is finally here. This is what IBM’s been talking about for a while, on demand computing.Google offers another set of interesting web services. It includes APIs for interacting with Google Apps and Google Gears that enables web applications to work offline. Adobe offers something similar called, AIR (formerly Apollo). Offline web applications will bring the power of Web 2.0 applications to the offline desktop (Did I just say that? Web apps more powerful than desktop apps?)Intuitively I know that this is a huge disruptive change — if only I can figure out how to take advantage of it! Let me know if you’ve figured it out…Update Sept 6, 2007: Check out SynthaSite’s use of Amazon’s Computing Cloud. Nirvanix recently launched as an alternative to Amazon’s S3. Nirvanix provides an SLA — Amazon doesn’t.
Read More
Recent Comments