Business software giant SAP's canny strategy to drive integration costs out of information technology (IT) investments is picking up pace in SA, with a high-powered delegation due in Johannesburg in July to demonstrate the benefits of the company's much-touted NetWeaver platform.
The visit is part of a 50-city global tour by top SAP officials, partners and customers to publicise the benefits of NetWeaver, which is an open integration and application platform.
NetWeaver's key attraction to customers and partners lies in its ability to reduce system complexity with lower total cost of ownership (TCO), protect investments in current technology solutions, provide a sustainable cost structure and promote flexible growth strategies. Its newly-released Rapid Installer tool significantly cuts installation time for NetWeaver, giving organisations a jump-start in evolving their IT landscapes into enablers of change.
"This release is installable in one CD," said SAP Africa's Alvin Paules, who heads NetWeaver development efforts in SA. "We believe this has tremendous impact on the market for SAP customers and non-SAP customers to reduce the total cost of ownership. It frees up a lot of money that was dedicated for integration."
SAP has figuratively bet the bank on NetWeaver, which has become the platform for all of SAP's software developments. This approach seems to be paying off. Since its release in January 2003, SAP NetWeaver has steadily permeated the worldwide base of SAP customers, with new users and partners adopting the platform in increasing numbers every month.
With more than 14 000 installations worldwide, many companies have already benefited from the platform's support for innovation, business process evolution, and rapid responses to market changes, all at a minimal integration cost.
The beauty of Rapid Installer lies in its ability to help customers cut SAP NetWeaver implementation time from days to a matter of hours, allowing for ease of integration and delivering pre-packaged business scenarios, configurations and built-in integration with existing systems.
"We're working to ensure that our solutions are easy to install so that customers have more time and resources to focus on their core business," said Paules. "With its pre-tested setup and configuration, NetWeaver Rapid Installer decreases the total cost of ownership by reducing installation and configuration time significantly."
Rapid Installer is also optimised for select hardware. SAP global partners HP and Sun offer hardware specifically configured for the needs of NetWeaver Rapid Installer, delivering an ideal price-performance ratio and saving customers considerable implementation time. Both HP and Sun offer a single point of contact for technical support for SAP NetWeaver Rapid Installer.
"With Rapid Installer, customers have a complete solution that can be up and running in a matter of hours," said Ron Eller, vice-president and general manager, Enterprise Solution Alliances, HP. "Because we have optimised and pre-tested all Rapid Installer systems before they are shipped and delivered, customers have the benefit of reduced time to production and lower total cost of ownership."
Rapid Installer leverages a company's existing IT platform by offering support for small, medium and large configuration settings for business scenarios. With this approach, customers can easily scale the system according to the number of portal users and add new hardware as necessary, ensuring good response time in a secure and reliable production environment. The tool includes a wizard-based installation process, which provides simple guidance in setting up the portal platform, knowledge management and collaboration capabilities, as well as the Java application server.
NetWeaver 2004 provides infrastructure simplicity and flexibility with enhanced SAP components including SAP Mobile Infrastructure, SAP Enterprise Portal, SAP Business Intelligence, SAP Master Data Management, SAP Exchange Infrastructure, and SAP Web Application Server.
It combines a services-based architecture with collaboration tools and pre-configured business content such as portal views, reports, and process templates. As a result, says Paules, SAP NetWeaver is both a technological platform for creating business software and a platform for building business solutions.
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SAP is the world's leading provider of business software solutions. SAP solutions are designed to meet the demands of companies of all sizes - from small and midsize businesses to global enterprises. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver open integration and application platform to reduce complexity and total cost of ownership and empower business change and innovation, mySAP Business Suite solutions are helping enterprises around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations. The unique core processes of various industries, from aerospace to utilities, are supported by more than 25 industry-specific SAP solution portfolios.
Today, more than 22 600 customers in over 120 countries run more than 76 100 installations of SAP software. With subsidiaries in more than 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP". (Additional information at http://www.sap.com.)
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