SAP Shows Off its New Jewel at Sapphire Asia

Enterprise resource planning giant SAP has officially launched its mysap.com enterprise information portal initiative in the Asia/Pacific region at the Singapore version of its Sapphire user
conference.

Calling the new interface to the 4.6 version of the SAP suite an “enterprise
management portal”, co-chairman and CEO Henning Kagermann used his keynote
address to urge Asian businesses to abandon closed networks and technologies
like electronic data interchange (EDI) in favour of the mysap.com
Marketplace, which is a business-to-business e-commerce Web site.

“With one look, a manager can have a very detailed picture of their
business, with not just key performance indicators, but alerts as well,”
Prof Kagermann said.

Les Hayman, CEO of SAP Asia/Pacific, said that the number of SAP
installations rose 40 per cent last year, which indicated the company’s move
towards the small to medium enterprise (SME) sector.

“Many CEOs are waiting until they can get it right,” Hayman warned. “It’s
OK to make mistakes. It’s not OK to sit still.”

In a briefing after his speech, Prof Kagermann said it would be “ridiculous
not to be open” to other networks and applications, including Hewlett
Packard’s concept of e-services and Oracle’s Business Online, which are
likely to be the main competing technologies to mysap.com.

He said that SAP had been working on interoperability with HP, and had also
published the specifications for its “Webflow” technology in the hope that
it would become an industry standard.

The prospect of competing with Microsoft for control of the corporate
desktop also did not worry Prof Kagermann, who said that while consumers
might be familiar with the WIndows interface from playing games on home PCs,
SAP’s focus was at the office with its Workplace offering, which is most
similar to the “traditional” concept of the enterprise information portal.

“SAP has much more to bring to the table than Microsoft,” he said. “In the
future, people will ask for the desktop for their business, which means [it
has to be] role-based.”

Kagermann acknowledged that the company was entering into partial
competition with knowledge management vendors like PC DOCS, FileNET and Open
Text with its portal push, but he said that SAP was in that industry
already.

“We will have, to some extent, competition [with KM vendors], and we will
also collaborate. We realise that SAP cannot provide all of the content,” he
said.

Hayman said that there was no separation between SAP’s R/3 suite and
mysap.com, as the latter was merely the latest version of the former.
“How much blood is in this arm, or in this arm? Mysap.com is our lifeblood,”
he joked.

The Singapore Sapphire 99 show has attracted 3700 delegates. It continues
until Wednesday, when former Australian prime minister Paul Keating will
deliver a keynote speech.

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