CMS Watch SAP Feed

SAP looks to India for ECM?

aps@cmswatch.com(Alan Pelz-Sharpe) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:23:00 -0400

Is SAP slowly moving into the ECM space? It's a question that has been asked so many times over the years that it has become something of a "chestnut," as we say in England. For if you are ever at a loss as to what to chat about with people in the ECM industry, SAP is a surefire conversation starter.

SAP was (allegedly) going to buy Open Text on many occasions, but as of today still have not. They were (allegedly) shocked when Open Text bought iXos ( a firm that focused almost exclusively on providing content and archiving software for SAP), but did nothing about it. They were (allegedly) going to buy German vendor Saperion, but didn't. Once Oracle moved in to the ECM space with their acquisition of Stellent, fine ECM minds asserted that SAP would be forced to respond, but they didn't.

But now SAP does appear to be doing something: they are considering buying a 15% stake in Indian ECM vendor NewGen. Could this be a prelude to a full acquisition? Well it could be and it wouldn't be a bad choice, though it may take Euro- and US-centric observers by surprise. At CMS Watch we always try to take a very global view of things and have been following NewGen since the birth of the ECM Suites Report. It's a product that would potentially be a good fit for SAP -- and one that could likely compete well against the likes of IBM and Oracle with the marketing and sales push that SAP could give it.

But who knows...a 15% stake sounds a lot, but to SAP 15% of NewGen is small change. (SAP's venture arm has also invested in search vendor Endeca and open source ECM supplier Alfresco.) What we do know is that it keeps the rumor mill busy - and reminds us that from the outside SAP may appear to doing nothing in the ECM space, but they clearly are aware of ECM, and they probably do have plans for the future, even if they haven't shared them yet.

As a buyer of an ECM system to handle content and archiving loads from SAP, it's not as if you are short of options; almost every major ECM vendor can provide relatively out of the box integrations with SAP, and some even have dedicated groups to support such integrations. So an entry by SAP into the ECM market will likely not present a sea change for buyers, but it will certainly be interesting fodder for industry observers.

SAP NetWeaver Portal moves slowly ahead on wiki support

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Tue, 8 Apr 2008 05:04:00 -0400

In recent news from the SAP Community Network, wiki functionality will soon get included in the SAP NetWeaver Portal offering. Actually SAP expects to ship a beta in Q3 2008, which will be built based on Clearspace Jive and integrated via iViews (SAP-speak for portlets), with support for portal roles. However, a final release is not slated until Q2 2009 -- a rather long time in wiki-years.

Many other vendors have recently added wiki functionality to their products, including:

Stellent built it themselves back in February 2006. Stellent was later bought by Oracle, which has a somewhat problematic integration using an open source wiki with its WebCenter suite.
Microsoft drummed up hype about integration with wiki vendor Atlassian in October 2007.
FatWire bought a local wiki vendor in November 2007.

What I find particularly interesting in SAP's announcement is their overall approach. Clearly SAP is filling an unmet need among their customer base, but they are suggesting a solution that does not (yet) implement SAP product standards when it comes to usability, performance, maintainability, security, and licensing terms. Also the wiki will not integrate into "workspaces" in the portal, which reduces its value somewhat.

SAP also cautions that this initial beta version comes without any future guarantees of backwards compatibility. Specifically SAP states that, "in case of an upgrade, content cannot be saved. The beta version is only a test version." So, if you want to experiment with a wiki inside the enterprise, my recommendation is that you look outside the SAP universe for a better alternative, at least until the expected general availability release.

What you can learn from IBM and SAP's legal imbroglios

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Tue, 1 Apr 2008 16:27:00 -0400

A couple recent news items find SAP and IBM both in a bit of legal hot water.

U.S.-based über-trash-collector Waste Management Inc. is suing SAP for a whopping $100 million, alleging that the ERP vendor demo'ed some very convincing vaporware, covering up a fundamental inability to meet stated requirements.

Meanwhile, IBM has been suspended from any new federal contracts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) -- an extraordinary, if likely temporary, measure -- after some alleged hanky-panky involving a failed contract bid and aggressive appeal. There's talk of potential criminal investigations of both EPA and IBM employees.

I don't know how either of these disputes will turn out, but from the news reports alone they raise several important issues for technology customers working with large (I mean really large) vendors.

In Waste Management's case, they might have saved themselves a world of trouble by performing their pilot before they signed on with SAP (something we always recommend), but at least they caught the problem early on, when measured in ERP-years.

I don't know what IBM did, but it seems like EPA thought Big Blue really crossed a line in their appeal of a failed contract bid. Federal contracting -- like so many things in Washington -- is a bare-knuckles sport. Threats of appeals and possible litigation by losing bidders can keep federal contracts officers awake at night. In this case, it appears EPA struck back.

Sure, small vendors can get difficult too. Customers frequently tell us that -- whatever the benefits of working with a smaller, more agile supplier -- their smaller vendors also tend to be more erratic and less predictable.

But big vendors can present some tough challenges. They frequently seek to make themselves a permanent part of your infrastructure, and then throw their weight around. Recently I've been accumulating anecdotes of Stellent customers unexpectedly encountering a much tougher crop of account reps at Oracle, after Oracle's acquisition of that Minnesota-based ECM vendor known for its friendly employees. I also find big vendors more likely to threaten "up the chain" -- all the way to C levels if necessary -- to appeal a lost bid or to suggest that a particular problem wasn't theirs, but rather stemmed from the customer's low-level employees failing to follow the vendor's prescribed best practices. Sometimes they're right, but often not.

Again, I have no reason to know whether IBM and SAP actually did anything wrong in these two cases, but you should remember that the larger the project and the bigger the supplier, if things go bad, the greater your likelihood of having to resolve problems using extra-normal means. Larger projects tend to beget longer vendor selection cycles and a tendency for customers to rush unduly through the final and sometimes grueling test and contracts phases in an understandable desire to "just get it over with," so they can start the real project in earnest. In actuality, this is where you need to take your time to make sure you've tied up as many loose ends as possible.

At the end of the day, you need to make sure you have the same kind of strong project leadership and accountability on your side that you expect your vendors to bring. That keeps you in control, keeps your suppliers' respect, and could well keep both of you out of court...

Enterprise Search Vendor Landscape, Circa 2008

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli and Adriaan Bloem) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:16:00 -0500

You might be tempted to select enterprise search vendors for your shortlist based on their supposed "leadership" status in the market -- status either conferred by analyst firms or assumed by the vendors themselves. However, CMS Watch analyst Theresa Regli argues that you need to look more closely at product and vendor alike -- and understand where both are headed -- to properly evaluate your longterm risks and opportunities in an evolving marketplace...

The Enterprise Search Report 2008, updated, plus a Basic Search edition

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Today we release an update and a new edition of our Enterprise Search Report 2008. In addition to Microsoft's acquisition of FAST influencing several of our reviews, we've added 3 new product reviews, of SAP's NetWeaver Search, Open Text's Discovery Server, and Apache Lucene, bringing the total number of product reviews in the Enterprise Edition up to 20.

But for those of you who are looking to do a simpler enterprise search implementation on a smaller budget, we've also debuted a Basic Search edition (with Team Use and Intranet Site License options), with a smaller selection of vendors, but still all the selection and implementation advice you seek. You can compare the two editions here, and determine which fits your project scope and budget. We'll highlight more of our recent enterprise search research here in the coming weeks.

SAP invests in Endeca

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 18:29:00 -0500

More quiet than the news of Microsoft's acquisition of FAST Search & Transfer was the recent announcement that enterprise search vendor Endeca has received $15 million in funding from the venture arms of Intel and SAP. As we'll point out in the upcoming update of our Enterprise Search Report, where we add an in-depth review of SAP's NetWeaver Enterprise Search, SAP has a legacy of its own search technology -- so why would they invest in someone else's?

Though $15 million is chump change for the likes of Intel and SAP, and Microsoft will have no problem writing the $1.2 billion check for FAST, acquisitions and investments speak volumes to the diversity of the technology in play, even within supposedly "niche" categories of products. SAP clearly doesn't see Endeca in the same target market, or addressing the same information findability problems, as their NetWeaver search product -- and neither should you. NetWeaver is tailored to search content that's part of a larger SAP platform; Endeca, on the other hand, focuses on more traditional enterprise search scenarios -- e-commerce, and website search in particular. Despite Microsoft claiming search is a core technology of MOSS 2007, they acquired FAST. Despite the debut of the new SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Search, an investment in Endeca is made. It only reinforces to you, the buyer and implementer, that one technology doesn't fit all. In fact, it seems Endeca is trying to convince Oracle they could also fill gaps for them that Oracle's SES doesn't currently fulfill.

Our suggestion to Endeca for the $15 million investment: how about adding search to your own web site?

Enterprise Portal Marketplace: 2008 Vendor Risk Profile

jb@boyeit.dk(Janus Boye) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:01:00 -0500

It is all too easy to identify vendors for your shortlist based on their supposed "leadership" status in the market. But CMS Watch contributing analyst Janus Boye argues that CIOs, procurement officers, and other technology leaders considering investments in enterprise portals should carefully examine the risk profile of prospective vendors to help identify the right "fit" for their needs.

The Portal - SOA divide

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:19:00 -0400

Alan Pelz-Sharpe recently cited a brewing backlash against SOA in the enterprise content management world. In the portal market I'm certainly hearing growing concerns about SOA from the user community. While some vendors, notably BEA, are continuing their year-long push for SOA, buyers are learning some expensive lessons. In particular the constant need for change management and the persistent performance problems are causing raised eyebrows. Portals can put a face to SOA, but still many vendors (e.g. IBM, SAP) with strong SOA marketing sell enterprise portals that only run on top of their very own software. As I point out in the Enterprise Portals Report, this would seem to contradict the idea of loosely coupled software...

Updates to the SAP NetWeaver Portal roadmap

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Fri, 4 May 2007 06:29:00 -0400

At last month's Sapphire, SAP's annual conference, SAP outlined an updated roadmap for their enterprise portal. Compared to Microsoft who reveals little about future plans (to be fair, because they were burned so much on Longhorn and Vista), SAP has openly stated that the "first functional upgrades are due sometime this year." We've previously covered their plans for a new GUI - which was demonstrated at Sapphire - but now comes details on new functionality through the "NetWeaver Composition Environment." In a separate interview, SAP also discussed a project called Collaborative Portal which will include (for the first time) distributed Web content publishing. Exciting times indeed, but as readers of the Enterprise Portals Report know, accessibility and web standards remain somewhat alien concepts at SAP, unfortunately even in the new roadmap.

Marketplace Realities: A European Perspective

jb@boyeit.dk(Janus Boye) — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:06:00 -0500

Janus Boye examines the content technology landscape from the perspective of a European customer, and finds much of concern (beta software, inexperience, confusing terminology), but much to laud (better accessibility, widespread choice) as well...

New GUI for SAP Portal -- New name for SAP TREX

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:10:00 -0400

The German giant is making some interesting portal waves in the footsteps of IBM. Shai Agassi, president of SAP's product and technology group, recently stated that "the next version of SAP's portal, code-named Project Muse, will use AJAX-style development to improve the navigation of SAP application's screens." According to an SAP blog: "Project Muse is being built from the ground up as an open, standards-based architecture -- using Flash and Flex technologies from Adobe/Macromedia." While the screenshots do indeed look interesting, I would rush to add that Flash and Flex are more proprietary than open standards. I guess that's what they meant by "AJAX-style." The concept of Web 2.0 still seems alien to SAP. As readers of the Enterprise Portals Report know, mastering the current SAP Portal interface requires a sharp learning curve and ample training. Beta versions of the new release should be out later in 2006 and are expected to become widely available in 2007. Meanwhile, SAP has taken some of the wraps off its TREX search engine, which the company will be releasing as "SAP Enterprise Search" next year.

Most commercial portal vendors behind new portlet standard

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:34:00 -0400

The new Portlet Specification 2.0, aka JSR 286 was just released as first public draft. The standard is currently supported by major portal vendors BEA, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Sun and Vignette. The main goal of this new version is to align the Java Portlet Specification with J2EE 1.4 and other JSRs relevant for portlet programming, and enhance caching support. The current specification, JSR 168, has been very important for portal developers. Unlike the CMS marketplace, the portal marketplace has benefited from some important standards, even if some vendors have developed proprietary "extensions." For buyers this one means that portlets developed to the spec work in all the portal products that support the standard, potentially reducing implementation time and making it easier to migrate between products. Portlet specs also enable you to potentially use re-use code across multiple different portal product installations -- a common scenario in large enterprises.

Portal Kudos and Shortcomings -- Summer, 2006

jb@boyeit.dk(Janus Boye) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:24:00 -0400

Segmenting the portal software marketplace by putting products into boxes on charts is a popular exercise among pundits. But CMS Watch contributing analyst Janus Boye argues that for buyers, a meaningful vendor breakdown must describe how well the various offerings fit actual requirements across specific business scenarios. See how Janus compares the major portal products in the marketplace today...

NetWeaver 2004s: Addressing weaknesses in SAP Enterprise Portal

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 15:51:00 -0400

Earlier this month, SAP quietly released an update to their portal offering. New business intelligence capabilities were added, together with some new development capabilities. What's even more interesting in the release is a focus on what SAP calls "external facing portals." This sounds much like the Web Publishing scenario, where SAP has traditionally not fit well for most organizations. SAP's decision to broaden the scope of the product follows similar moves by the other infrastructure portal vendors. The hungry SAP ecosystem wants more features, not less. Unfortunately, this latest update does not lower SAP Enterprise Portal's infamously steep learning curve.

Insider view into SAP pricing

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Thu, 25 May 2006 11:25:00 -0400

Among the many products of German software giant SAP we cover 2: SAP Enterprise Portal and TREX, their search engine. For both of these, SAP has traditionally remained secretive about pricing and typically only sells them in bundles as parts of larger deals. A recent blog post on pricing scenarios by longtime SAP-watcher Vinnie Mirchandani sheds some interesting light on SAP pricing and other economics. This quote says much about today's SAP: "While it is focused on value from its software, it seems less sensitive to the reduced cost of competitive software." In my experience those enterprises who automatically turned to SAP for portal or enterprise search services simply based on other existing SAP applications have been faced with comparatively complex and expensive projects. As the Enterprise Search Report points out, integrating 3rd-party search engines into SAP infrastructure is not trivial. Nevertheless, you should evaluate your options carefully.

What SAP access through MS Outlook means for Portals

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Wed, 3 May 2006 18:09:00 -0400

In news from a joint-venture between SAP and Microsoft, the two companies will launch what they call "Duet" next month. Previously known as the "Mendecino Project," Duet promises to be "a joint product that enables people to interact quickly and easily with SAP business processes and data through Microsoft Office applications." In other words business users will be able to access SAP via Outlook, instead of the old SAP GUI, or the complex, browser-based SAP Portal interface. It will be interesting to follow where this leaves the portal interface; as more vendors develop Outlook clients (a trend that should accelerate next year), Outlook could become the light version of the elusive portal dashboard so many enterprises seek. [Update, 14 May: It seems like IBM is following the same path, with recent news on Notes for SAP]