Sapphire '97: R/3 integration fuels product announcements R/3-related plans from Intel, Sun, EMC, and others By Torsten Busse, IDG News Service, San Francisco Bureau

September  1997

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Amid the countless database and hardware benchmarks released here this week for R/3 came the following announcements:

• Compaq Computer Corp. said that systems integrator Inacom Corp. is now distributing its new R/3PAQ, a Ready-to-Run R/3 bundle that includes R/3 preinstalled on Compaq's ProLiant Servers under Windows NT.

  The Ready-to-Run R/3 program, a new initiative announced by SAP here Monday, is designed to eliminate the technical installation costs of R/3 for small- to medium-size businesses. Compaq said its offer will reduce installation times by between 20 to 25 days on average.

• Digital Equipment Corp. also announced preconfigured R/3 bundles offering its 64-bit AlphaServer systems with R/3 preinstalled for $37,000.

• Acquion, of Greenville, SC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harbinger Corp., and Aspect Development Inc., of Mountain View, CA, announced strategic partnerships with SAP under which the companies will develop Web-based maintenance, repairs, and operations (MRO) procurement systems, integrated with R/3.

  Utilizing SAP's recently announced Purchase Requisition System, the systems to be developed will integrate Aspect's SmartMRO catalog engine and Acquion's catalog content and supplier-buyer relationship management tools with R/3's back-office capabilities. It will allow users to purchase MRO items such as plant machinery parts, office supplies, and facility maintenance items such as light bulbs and air filters.

  The purchase requisition will be an independent component of R/3 and work with R/3's Web-based Employee Self Service applications. It is due to ship by the end of the year.

• Intel Corp. said it will open the SAP Intel Center of Expertise to better manage development and marketing programs between the two companies and serve as a technical resource for SAP R/3 customers and Intel OEMs.

  Intel and SAP are working on optimizing R/3 for Intel's first IA-64 microprocessor, code-named Merced, and systems that will be built around the new 64-bit processor, when it becomes available in the next several years.

  SAP expects its R/3 products to be certified on Merced-based IA-64 platforms from a large number of industry-leading system vendors, including Compaq, Hewlett-Packard Co., Sequent Computer Systems Inc. and Siemens-Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, all of which have previously announced plans for Merced-based system availability at launch.

  Intel-based servers constitute the fastest growing market segment of R/3 systems, representing nearly 30 percent of the installed base, while more than 44 percent of new R/3 sales worldwide are for Intel architecture and Windows NT-based platforms, Intel said.

  SAP and Intel also will work together to bring system area network (SAN) clustering technology to the R/3 user community, said Intel CEO Andy Grove. Efforts will focus on the integration of the Virtual Interface (VI) Architecture -- a high-speed communications interface for clusters of servers and workstations -- into the SAP distributed Business Framework object-oriented component architecture. Products based on the VI specification are expected to ship in the first half of 1998.

• Sun Microsystems Inc., announced services for R/3 users wanting to migrate their systems to Sun's Ultra Enterprise computing platform, promising to deliver fully functional production-mode migration of R/3 from any systems to the Ultra servers.

• IDS Scheer GmbH of Germany said it will continue to cooperate with SAP in the field of Business Object Modeling as core element of the R/3 4.0 Business Object Repository (BOR).

  SAP will use this partnership as a contribution to its Business Framework Architecture, which integrates modular R/3 components as well as complementary software components into SAP solutions. Part of the conceptual work of this cooperation is the design of extended open APIs of the Business Engineer, SAP's R/3 implementation tool, for future use in the area of Business Object and workflow modeling.

  The SAP Business Object architecture will incorporate Universal Modeling Language (UML) standards, an area in which IDS Scheer has built competence. The work is also intended to offer R/3 customers an integration path between UML methodology and the Event-driven Process Chain (ePC) Methodology used by SAP.

  IDS Scheer will use its new 32-bit-architecture product, ARIS Easy Design, to implement the conceptual results. The relevant UML model types are already implemented in ARIS Easy Design 1.0, which is now available in the U.S.

• EMC Corp., of Hopkinton, MA, said it will work with SAP on development and integration of R/3 and EMC's systems, such as EMC's TimeFinder and EMC DataReach information management and protection software and its storage systems.

• Following SAP's decision to provide its own supply chain management product, i2 Technologies Inc. of Irving, TX, said that instead of embedding its Rhythm constraint-based supply chain planner into the SAP R/3 system as originally planned, the companies will link their systems via SAP's supply chain program interface.

Resources

• SAP's Sapphire '97 http://www.sap.com/usa/sapphire/index.htm
• SAP R/3 release 4.0 http://www.sap.com/rel40/index.htm
• "Sapphire '97: Users content, if SAP delivers on promises," September 1997 SunWorld news story http://www.sun.com/sunworldonline/swol-09-1997-swol-09-sap.html
• Inacom http://www.inacom.com/
• Compaq http://www.compaq.com/
• Digital Equipment Corp. http://www.digital.com/
• Acquion http://www.acquion.com/
• Aspects http://www.aspectdv.com/
• Intel http://www.intel.com/
• IDS Scheer http://www.ids-scheer.com
• EMC http://www.emc.com/
• I2 Technologies http://www.i2.com/

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