Siemens, Synopsys Join NetWeaver Web

Officials at software giant SAP opened their 8th annual
Tech Education conference in Las Vegas with the announcement two technology
companies have signed up with its integration suite, NetWeaver.

Siemens, the Germany-based electronics corporation, and Synopsys, an
electronic design automation software company, will integrate their
back-office and front-office functions into one to improve business
processes.

Details were not available at press time about the size or term of the
contracts, though Bill Wohl, a SAP vice president, said the Synopsys deal
was “fairly sizable” and NetWeaver would be used to “heavily leverage their
customer relationship management (CRM ) software and use
NetWeaver to drive their business.”

“It’s another indicator of the progress we are making in and out of the
business ecosystems,” he added.

SAP launched NetWeaver in January and has been putting a lot of emphasis on
the integration suite, upgrading the software in June.

The company, often seen as a back-end, pure-play enterprise resource
planning (ERP ) software maker, has been making inroads to
becoming all things to all businesses. A heavy emphasis in the NetWeaver
suite is the CRM and supply chain management (SCM) applications getting tied
in with the ERP to bring everything under one software umbrella.

Wohl said the activities of the late 90s has spurred interest in, and the
need for, an integrated solution in the enterprise. Three, four years ago,
when the terms and software for SCM, ERP and CRM were creating a buzz
through corporate America, IT departments rushed to implement supposedly
“best of breed” software solutions, he said. When the tech bubble burst, so
did the cash cornucopia feeding IT budgets.

Suddenly, three different applications were being used to run all these
processes, Wohl said. Rather than scrap a majority of the applications in
favor of one, a pricey proposition, integrators like SAP and BEA let
businesses tie them together with an interface that accommodates all.

“That’s where the real heavy lifting is, those lessons learned (in the 90s)
show the real cost of these applications working together,” Wohl said.
“When you upgrade one area, you have upgrade them all.

“Most customers will not be 100 percent SAP,” he added. “NetWeaver makes it
easier to work with the programs they already have.”