Utilities can address Electric Vehicle Challenges with SAP Solutions
Continue reading " Utilities can address Electric Vehicle Challenges with SAP Solutions " »
Discuss business intelligence, integration, compliance and a host of other SAP-related topics – implementation, best practices and resources to negotiate the world of SAP better!
November 1, 2011
June 13, 2011
GRC remains top of mind for SAP users
PAC US, Peter Russo - Managing Director
GRC - or Governance, Risk and Compliance - is a major area of concern for key executives, especially CFOs who ultimately sign the checks for major tech and consulting purchases. The issue sprang to prominence with the SOX regulations and changes to IFRS. But while organizations largely have those under control now, there are plenty of regulations on the way - in areas like sustainability and in some specific sectors like banking and insurance with Basel III and Solvency II. And, GRC is a wide field; other issues it helps with are perennial and common to most businesses - fraud reduction, for instance. And senior execs remain in the front line of accountability.
Continue reading " GRC remains top of mind for SAP users " »
June 2, 2011
The clouds lifted a little at Sapphire
PAC US, Peter Russo - Managing Director
SAP's journey to offering Cloud solutions over the last couple of years has not been trouble-free, with the well-documented issues with Business ByDesign (now, it seems, largely resolved). The strategy was also progressing in two parallel directions, with a different strategy for large enterprises (Cloud-based add-ons like CRM OnDemand, originally to be based on its 'Frictionless' technology) to that for small organizations (the all-embracing SaaS solution of Business ByDesign). This strategy was overseen by John Wookey, who left SAP shortly before Sapphire. So there was much interest in SAP's SaaS strategy announcements.
Several things need to be highlighted from this.
Continue reading " The clouds lifted a little at Sapphire " »
May 30, 2011
SAP and Sybase - a new strategic option, 20 years on
PAC US, Peter Russo - Managing Director
Generally overlooked amidst all the ballyhoo at Sapphire about HANA in-memory database (not to mention social software, mobility, analytics and the rest) was an intriguing, if not unexpected, database announcement: that SAP ERP would soon be available running on Sybase's ASE relational database. The combination is being piloted at 'selected customers' right now and will be generally available later in 2011.
Continue reading " SAP and Sybase - a new strategic option, 20 years on " »
May 20, 2011
SAPPHIRE NOW - Conference Wrap-up
PAC US, Peter Russo - Managing Director
Following three days packed with new announcements, a lot of customer activities, and of course, Sting!, the first leg of SAP Sapphire closes until November, when Sapphire Europe (in Madrid, Spain) and Sapphire Asia (in Beijing, China) begin!
May 18, 2011
SAPPHIRE NOW - DAY 2
PAC US, Peter Russo - Managing Director
Finally on Tuesday, co-CEO's Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe gave their renewed visions of the market, and how customers can invest for growth through SAP's rapidly broadening portfolio of solutions.
The primary focuses continued to follow SAP's new strategy first introduced at last year's event: "on-premise, on-demand and on-device," however this year, the company was prepared to show the fruits of its developments.
May 17, 2011
SAPPHIRE NOW - DAY 1
PAC US, Peter Russo - Managing Director
SAP's Sapphire NOW conference kicked off on Monday, and beyond the string of announcements, keynotes and numerous discussions, the energy of the show was clearly upbeat, with nearly 60,000 attendees, and a lot of customer and partner activity particularly on the expo floor. This is a far cry from just two years ago where the feeling was downright depressing, following the near global economic collapse.
What will Enterprise mobility need to succeed?
Enterprise today are targeting mobile workers and field operations for new revenue opportunities and cost efficiencies. These employees, which include field technicians, service specialists, inspectors, and supply personnel, manage a sizeable amount of mission-critical data and represent the front line of interaction with enterprise assets and customers. However, the application of technology to the highly-mobile field force has proven to be a challenge, especially in complex environments. Large-scale, heterogeneous enterprise often presents a unique set of challenges - Multiple back-end data sources; need to manage structured as well unstructured data; multiple devices having multiple form factors and operating systems, security, encrption......etc....list goes on......please join us to discuss this topic in ASUG session " Driving greated ROI through Mobility" on 18th May at 1.30pm in Orlando (Content Area: Mobile, Solution Manager)
May 16, 2011
Social Software - looking for clarification
Peter Russo - Managing Director, PAC US
In last week's blog post I remarked that key trends for SAP, which I expect to see much of at SAPPHIRE 2011, included mobility and Software as a Service. At the intersection of these two trends is one of today's hottest topics of all: collaboration, or "social" software.
Continue reading " Social Software - looking for clarification " »
Building tomorrow's Enterprise with SAP :- What will be your next step?
Very powerful waves of change are creating new opportunities and IT is inextricably linked to these emerging trends driving business growth. The advent of the digital consumer, pervasive access to enterprise information and resources on mobile devices, democratization of business intelligence, real time analytics through in-memory computing, use of modular information technology like SOA to smarter organizations simplifying their operations and the emergence of the Cloud are some significant examples.
Continue reading " Building tomorrow's Enterprise with SAP :- What will be your next step? " »
May 13, 2011
Consolidation with a federation based approach- Is it really a way out?
In some of my previous blogs I have been trying to bring to fore some of pertinent questions and choices that our clients are facing in the Business Objects-BI space, there also certain similar dilemma that they are facing with certain choices in the Business Objects Enterprise-Information Management (EIM) area. One of the many questions that we face on a regular basis from our client is on whether to use the Business Objects-Data Federator(BO-DF) in a given scenario and the specific advantages of the tool as such.
Continue reading " Consolidation with a federation based approach- Is it really a way out? " »
May 11, 2011
The Search for Retail Intelligence
By
Naresh Ramamurti
Practice Leader - SAP RETAIL
Customer Centricity and Cross-Channel shopping have been the two greatest trends in RETAIL since 2010. With Apple and Google taking the world's number 1 and 2 spots for global brands this year, these trends have taken a whole new meaning. On the foundation of tomorrow's mobile applications, customers have dynamited the way they interact with retailers - redefining and rewriting the shopper experience from product to point of sale. While organizations around the world continue to grapple with the challenges of reducing their cost of business, Retailers have an exceptional opportunity to take control of the shopping experience - from embracing social networks to crunching core analytics in real time.
May 10, 2011
Standing at the cross roads of the Business Objects journey-PART II
While in my previous blog at http://www.infosysblogs.com/sap/ I had discussed about the typical questions facing organizations looking at adopting Business Objects, I would now like to help provide a way forward towards navigating through those questions and challenges. Before we get into the details of the path forward let us take a peek into how BO version 4.0 compares with version 3.1 based on our experience in the beta testing phase that we had carried out last year.
Continue reading " Standing at the cross roads of the Business Objects journey-PART II " »
Building Tomorrow's Enterprise with BI ... Today!
The Business Intelligence market has grown 13% in 2010, to surpass the 10 billion USD mark, it surely continues to be the top priority at most organizations!
BI, as a domain, has seen continuous evolution and marked with regular innovation cycles. So much so that, at times, it becomes difficult to keep pace with the upcoming trends. You may have just finished getting your implementation aligned with one, only to find that something better, that brings you even more business value is already up at the anvil. While this, at times, is a difficult position for the IS team, but considering the additional value that your business will be able to achieve, it is most important to ensure that you keep moving up the maturity curve and make the most of these innovations.
Numerous questions come to mind -
- Do I need to look at all the upcoming trends?
- How can I prioritize these trends for my needs?
- What is the approach that I should use for implementing these innovations? Should I wait and watch or should I take them head-on?
- How should I address them - for the short term or the long term?
- Do I change my BI strategy mid-way to address these new dimensions?
Keeping in mind the dilemma that we see most of our customers face, Infosys brings to you a panel discussion on this topic at the upcoming SAPPHIRE 2011 event at Orlando. We will have three industry experts, leading the BI strategy at three large and leading organizations, share with you their thoughts on the current BI trends, how they see the BI world changing and what they would like to see it transform into. They will also share their experiences and recommendations on how you can approach BI and its numerous innovations to help you build tomorrow's enterprise, today!
Be there to get answers to your questions!
All eyes on SAPPHIRE NOW in 2011
2010 was a year of change, even turbulence, for SAP - particularly at the leadership level, with the replacement of CEO Leo Apotheker by co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hageman Snabe. The new leadership brought renewed confidence, which certainly showed in 2010 results. The bold acquisition of Sybase gave a position in mobility, the second largest business application growth topic behind SaaS.
May 9, 2011
Future controls for ERP projects with Mobile Applications
In the current trend, most of companies are exposing their enterprise applications via web & iGadgets.
The audit and controls team aware of these changes and prepared for checking the security threats to some extent.
In future, business users may demand more iFriendly applications with iAdvancements.
There are many known and proven risks from mobile devices like using the found sim card by an unauthorized user, sending e-mails asking for financial help with fake address etc.,
If we consider similar situation for enterprise critical applications, the damage will be exponential.
Continue reading " Future controls for ERP projects with Mobile Applications " »
SAP SCM at Sapphire 2011 - what to look for
Continue reading " SAP SCM at Sapphire 2011 - what to look for " »
Standing at the cross roads of the Business Objects journey-PART I
In the last one month I came across the questions and predicament facing a couple of our global customers who were deliberating with the idea of implementing Business Objects on top of their SAP BW landscape.
Scenario-1:
A heavy engineering company is looking at rolling out SAP for its Customer and sales service functions across various service centers in mainland Europe. Along with its SAP ECC roll out it was looking at establishing its analytical platform utilizing SAP BW and Business Objects as the front end. It intends to start work the project from the next month. It is at a cross roads and trying to decide on whether it should go ahead with BO version 3.1 or go with the brand new version 4.0.
Scenario-2:
A large US based logistics company is already on a SAP BW BEx platform and had decided to migrate to a Business Objects reporting suite. It went ahead with performing a pilot of moving a few reports and dashboards to BO using version 3.1 and is now ready to launch the full program. However now it is trying to determine whether it should go ahead with the version 3.1 or move the pilot to version 4.0 and then perform the migration.
Both organizations are facing their moment of truth and am sure that they not in isolation. There would be many more corporations trying to navigate through this situation and making the best out of it. Let us try to understand the typical questions that are arising out of the situation:
· The first and foremost question running in the mind would be on whether BO 4.0 would be in General Availability within the next one month or would there be further delays?
· BO 4.0 promises to provide a much more seamless integration with SAP BW backend. Would the product be living up to its promise?
· Should I decide to go ahead with integrating BO3.1 with BW for now and decide to move to BO 4.0 or higher later, how much would be the migration efforts?
· Would SAP be protecting my investments on BO 3.1 and BW should I decide to go ahead with 3.1 or would I be again asked to move to 4.0 in the immediate future?
· Would I be better off waiting for a BO version 4.1 or higher?
I am sure there would be quite a few more that could as well be on the above list but I have tried to capture the most popular questions that we are facing with some of our clients who are looking at adopting BO in the immediate future.
Whereas there are no straight forward answers to the above questions we could definitely work out a strategic fit to decide on whether an organization should look at moving with 4.0 or start with 3.1.
In the subsequent blog I will try to delve into key differentiators of the two versions of Business Objects and the considerations that should drive the decision of choosing between them
May 3, 2011
Does you GRC User Access Control include IAM?
The key to developing IAM integrated solutions is to start small, build a foundation that can be leveraged for growth.
Key Areas for developing the IAM integrated solution
1. Vision - Objectives
2. Governance
3. Roles and Responsibilities
4. Process: User Management, Access Controls, and Audit
5. Architecture - Current and future state
Developing an IAM solution poses several challenges to the business in regards to cost, compliance, and constant changes to the business to align with business objectives.
When choosing an IDM solution an organization must choose solutions that can manage not only Enterprise Applications such as SAP but 3rd party applications that can work together.
By integrating an HR system as a base for user identity, and using and IDM system as the center for all user access on the enterprise, an organization can realize the following benefits:
1. Centralized identity management
2. Centralized User Provision
3. Centralized Audit and Compliance
4. Automated Process for Password Reset, User Approvals, etc.
5. Reduced cost operating cost
6. Reduced audit cost.
Let Infosys develop your end to end user access solutions, by integrating it holistic GRC framework and IT infrastructure experience.
Infosys is uniquely positioned to provide cost-effective, value added compliance and IT infrastructure consulting services. Infosys consultants bring a mix of audit, compliance, ERP experience and IT infrastructure experience from across multiple geographies where organizations leverage GRC technology. To learn more about Infosys, visit: www.inofsys.com
Continue reading " Does you GRC User Access Control include IAM? " »
April 27, 2011
SAP Driven Business Transformation: Cost or Value
SAP drives business transformations. But there are these transformational journeys where cost is under perpetual pressure. The entire focus is on the cost and time over runs. Are you always justifying costs? What is wrong with the program?
Continue reading " SAP Driven Business Transformation: Cost or Value " »
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