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Enterprise software giant SAP on Tuesday took the wraps off 10 new business analytics applications geared toward a host of industry verticals.
SAP (NYSE: SAP) characterized the releases as the first step in its strategy to provide business analytics that offer employees across organizations critical, industry-specific information wherever and however they want to use it. Dubbed SAP BusinessObjects analytics applications, the apps came about through what SAP described as close work with customers to create applications that in any environment can be deployed quickly and can be customized to meet particular business goals with the help of the SAP Services organization or partner ecosystem.
SAP Co-CEO Bill McDermott unveiled the applications while speaking at DEMO Fall 2010 in Santa Clara, Calif.
“From the CEO all the way to the shop floor, the power of effective decision-making, when duplicated across hundreds if not thousands of employees, adds up to significant value for companies through speed, agility and changed behaviors,” McDermott said. “Codeveloped with customers, SAP BusinessObjects analytic applications are available today, easy to implement on any system — SAP and non-SAP — and provide instant value to any organization.”
A study recently released by Sybase (acquired by SAP in July) found that a median Fortune 1000 company stands to gain just over $2 billion in annual revenue by more effectively using the data already at its disposal.
SAP said the new line of applications can be deployed in as little as eight weeks and can work with structured or unstructured data in both SAP and non-SAP environments. The verticals covered by the new applications include healthcare, consumer products, public sector, financial services, retail and telecommunications.
For instance, a health care-specific suite features SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation for Healthcare and SAP BusinessObjects Quality Management for Healthcare.
The company noted that its systems integrator partners — including Aster Group, Blueprint, Capgemini, Column5, CSC, Fusion Consulting, The Glenture Group, LSI Consulting and syskoplan — will complement the new applications by helping customers build out deployments based on their individual needs. Additionally, SAP plans to optimize its BusinessObjects analytic applications with the hosting and data warehousing solutions of its technology partners, HP and Teradata.
iPad Access to SAP Business Analytics in the Cloud
Enterprise applications don’t always make for the most compelling onstage demos, but McDermott used an Apple iPad to great effect to show off his company’s new analytics software at the DEMO conference.
Demonstrating the retail version of the program, McDermott showed real-time analytics for a typical company by region and by product line, and quickly changed views with a few finger swipes to check inventory levels and see what products were out of stock. He was also able to bookmark the view to review later.
This all may sound like what a typical business analytics program should do, but to pull off the demo in real-time on Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) popular mobile device rather than a high-powered PC, it took a bit more behind-the-scenes work.
“What I just showed was 100 million records in real time being manipulated at sub-second speeds, all provisioned in the cloud,” McDermott said.
He said SAP is now able to run all its operations in memory from an iPad via the company’s private cloud, providing lightning-quick access to huge databases of information.
Thor Olavsrud is a contributor to InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals. Additional reporting by InternetNews.com West Coast Bureau Chief David Needle.
