SAP steaming up to become an all-round player in the cloud computing market

On 30 March 2010 SAP presented the availability of their on-demand, collaborative decision-making software called SAP StreamWork, formerly known as 12sprints. SAP StreamWork is transforming the way people work together, share information, make clear decisions and develop strategies.

Most businesses today use a range of applications, including e-mail, collaboration products, business systems and Web 2.0 applications to accomplish their work. In such chaotic and constantly changing work environments where information flows at an overwhelming pace it becomes hard to establish a clear decision-making foundation and get the proper results.

SAP addresses this challenge with SAP StreamWork, which brings together people, information and proven business methodologies to help teams naturally and fluidly work toward goals and outcomes. Teams can assess situations together, develop strategies and make clear decisions, with a full record of what transpired.

With customers looking for low-cost and easy-to consume pricing models that are flexible and can be altered to meet changing business needs, SAP is offering SAP StreamWork through a tiered subscription model that includes a free version.

To learn more about the functionality of SAP StreamWork visit the Tutorials section or watch the SAP StreamWork YouTube channel at YouTube SAP StreamWork.

Breaking down the barriers to adoption of Cloud Computing is not an easy task. It requires vision, years of technology innovation and the financial capabilities - the power - to transform vision into practice.

In the last few years SAP has worked hard to become an all-round Cloud Computing company, by acquiring and developing innovative Cloud-oriented technologies.

February 2009 - Acquisition of Coghead
On 19 February 2009, SAP acquired the intellectual property assets of Coghead, the next generation platform for building web applications.

Read more about Coghead on SAP Web 2.0 by Timo Elliot at SAP Cloud Platform.

May 2009 - Acquisition of Skydata
On 25 May 2009, SAP acquired the innovative start-up company Skydata, a new type of business mobile “Mashup” application provider, that enables fast and easy access to all enterprise business data on RIM, Windows Mobile and Apple iPhone devices.

Read more about SkyData on SAP Web 2.0 by Timo Elliot at SAP acquires Skydata for agility and mobility.

September 2009 - SAP Gravity
End of September 2009 SAP Research in Brisbane, Australia and SAP Netweaver Development presented SAP Gravity, a Business Processing Modeling Tool for Google Wave. SAP Gravity is a prototype providing real-time, cloud-based collaborative business process modeling within Google Wave.

Google Wave is Google’s new real-time collaboration platform that combines features of e-mail, social networking, wikis and instant messaging in one integrated browser-based client. Google Wave offers rich developer APIs to extend the core functionality with custom components.

SAP Gravity has been embedded as a Google Wave “gadget” that can be added within the Google Wave client. Leveraging the collaborative features of Google Wave, all business process modeling activities get propagated in near real-time to all other participants of the Wave. In addition, participants of the Wave can use all other features provided by Google and its developer community to enrich the collaborative modeling experience.

Read more about Gravity on SAP Web 2.0 by Timo Elliot at SAP Gravity Collaboration using Google Wave.

Meanwhile SAP is integrating the Gravity prototype into SAP StreamWork.

SAP Research RoofTop Marketplace
A new kind of Web-based application, known as Enterprise Mashups, has gained momentum in the last years: Business users with no or limited programming skills are empowered to leverage in a collaborative manner user friendly building blocks and to combine and reuse existing Web-based resources within minutes to new value added applications in order to solve an individual and ad-hoc business problem.

SAP Research St. Gallen in Switzerland build the SAP Research RoofTop Marketplace prototype as part of their participation in the European Framework Programme 7 project Fast Morfeo. FAST aims at providing an innovative visual programming environment that will facilitate the development of next-generation composite user interfaces. It constitutes a novel approach to application composition and business process definition from a top-down user-centric perspective.

The SAP Research RoofTop Marketplace prototype is a Web-based application based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) that demonstrates the power of Mashups and presents an intuitive environment to create Enterprise Mashups without any programming skills.

Read the paper Towards A Reference Model for Grassroots Enterprise Mashup Environments.

Read more about SAP Research Rooftop Marketplace on SAP Web 2.0 by Timo Elliot at SAP Innovation Enterprise Mashup prototype RoofTop Marketplace.

SAP launched the beta release of StreamWork in February 2010 under the codename 12Sprints and managed to attract the attention of some well-known providers of web-based on-demand solutions, such as Box.net, Evernote and Scribd. These companies teamed up with SAP and embraced the software’s open architecture. They established integration with their solutions within a few weeks time.

- Box.net
Box.net, based in Palo Alto, California, was founded on a simple, powerful idea: people should be able to access and share their content from anywhere.

The Box’s cloud content management platform makes it simple for businesses to share, access and manage content online. The integration with SAP StreamWork enables users to easily add their Box content, such as research reports, marketing and creative assets, or project plans to an SAP StreamWork activity, so that relevant content can be present in the decision-making process.

Additionally SAP StreamWork users can also create Box folders directly within SAP StreamWork and associate them with a specific activity.

The integration with SAP StreamWork demonstrates - is another example of - how the cloud continues to be a viable platform for businesses of all sizes, said Karen Appleton, vice president of business development at Box.net.

Most people will know Box.net from the LinkedIn Files application that enables LinkedIn users to:
* upload, organize and manage files to share with other members
* share documents, presentations, photos, videos and audio on their profile page
* send files stored on Box.net seamlessly with other users through LinkedIn messaging system
* collaborate and connect with LinkedIn members through project files and folders

Want to learn how to use Box.net on LinkedIn watch the YouTube video LinkedIn’s Box.net Application.

- Evernote.com
Evernote is an independent, privately held company headquartered in Mountain View, California.

The goal of Evernote is to give everyone the ability to easily capture any moment, idea, inspiration, or experience whenever they want using whichever device or platform they find most convenient, and then to make all of that information easy to find.

Evernote provides a multi-platform content capture and organization service, that works across the computers and phones people are using on a daily basis. Evernote is integrated into SAP StreamWork, allowing users to pull information from Evernote directly into an SAP StreamWork activity.

“Successful teamwork requires that all stakeholders easily share their thoughts and information in order to make the right decisions,” said Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote. “From collecting research to sharing ideas, every aspect of a project needs to be well handled to ensure the best results. Evernote and SAP StreamWork make this possible.

Evernote allows individuals to take notes, save research and capture ideas anywhere using their computers and phones. That content is then automatically sent into their SAP StreamWork projects, where team members can collaborate and use the data to inform their decisions. Together, Evernote and SAP StreamWork get users from idea to decision fast.”

- Scribd.com
Scribd is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and launched in 2007. Meanwhile Scribd became the largest social publishing and reading site in the world.

On Scribd, people can easily turn any file - such as PDF, Word and PowerPoint - into a web document and immediately connect with passionate readers and information-seekers on the thriving community, through connected sites such as Facebook or Twitter and search engines such as Google.

Scribd has contributed document reader technology to SAP StreamWork allowing users to read documents in formats such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel directly within the SAP StreamWork environment, without having to download or open the file in a new window. “Integrating Scribd technology into SAP StreamWork gives people access to all of the documentation they need to make informed decisions,” said Jared Friedman, CTO and co-founder, Scribd.

Read the news announcement SAP® StreamWork™ Helps Companies of All Sizes Transform the Way People Work on the website of SAP.

Tags: ERP, CRM, cloud computing, mashups

Last updated: 27-06-2010

Start saving the climate by using e-Invoicing !

While analysts and investors have always focused on the financial position of companies, today environmental aspects are becoming of greater interest and importance. Financial investors are increasingly assessing the contribution that environmental issues have on intangible corporate value, such as brand value, customer loyalty and retention, and corporate reputation.

With the growing attention for the principles of sustainability many companies started publishing their annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) achievements and/or include relevant environmental key performance indicators in their annual reports. Stakeholders want companies to disclose information about how they have performed in their value creation process, how they have maximized the value of their intangible assets and how they have / will contribute to the environmental theme of climate change.

Studies of several Research Organizations and Institutions in the past years show the environmental impact of switching from paper-based invoicing to electronic invoicing is high. One way for companies to present their commitment to the preservation of the natural environment is by implementing electronic means of doing business such as electronic invoicing and procurement.

A recent study (April 2010) of TNO - the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research - reveals that paper invoicing has an energy consumption that is almost twice as much and a CO2 emission approximately 1.5 times higher as for digital invoicing. TNO investigated the direct and indirect effects of dematerialization on the usage of energy and the emission of CO2.

To most of us the concept of dematerialization is ‘Less clear than it seems’ and that is precisely the title of a thematic exploration study executed for the Dutch Ministry of VROM (Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment) in September 2000 (published in January 2001). The authors of the document sided with the view that ‘the aim of dematerialization is the reduction of environmental impact of material flows’ and provided a number of definitions, visions and policy suggestions. Their dematerialization policy is aimed towards influencing the development of economic systems in such a way that the environmental impact of the material flow caused by those systems is significantly, and in absolute terms, reduced.

TNO calculated that ten million electronic invoices sent by businesses to governments (B2G) amount to energy savings of 3TJ (terajoule) and almost 200 tonne (tonne) CO2. In their report ‘Energie- en CO2-besparing door elektronisch factureren’ they concluded that switching to digital invoicing for all invoicing types (B2G, B2B and B2C) would result into energy savings of approximately 1PJ (petajoule) and a CO2 emission savings of almost 70 Kt (kilotonne).

In a similar study from 2008 by the Department of Environmental Strategies Research at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, the whole paper invoice life cycle was assessed from the forestry up to and including the recycling of the paper after the legal archive period. In the report ‘Effects of the total change from paper invoicing to electronic invoicing in Sweden’ the authors present their Life Cycle Assessment approach and the results of their analysis.

The study examined the consequences of changing 1,4 billion invoices from distribution on paper to electronic distribution and concluded that this change would be beneficial. If all invoices in Sweden were to be changed from paper to electronic, a total energy saving of around 1.400 TJ-equivalents/year and reductions of greenhouse gas emissions corresponding to 39.000 to 41.000 tonne CO2-equivalents/year would be made.

A study of Methis Environmental in Belgium shows that a saving of 15.000 tonne paper and a reduction of CO2 emission between 24.500 - 33.000 tonne can be achieved by using e-Invoicing instead of printed invoices. Their calculation takes as average 900 millions of invoices printed by year and a use of 50 % recycled paper.

Before the environmental benefits will become visible to everyone a serious uptake of electronic invoicing in Europe is needed. In 2009 the number of businesses using electronic invoicing was 1,4 million and the total volume of processed e-invoices in the B2B segment was 860 million (Source: DB Research & Billintis) . With over 490 million businesses in Europe and a total of 32 billion invoices the percentage of e-invoice users is only 0,2% and the percentage of e-invoices is just 2,7%.

With such low diffusion and penetration of electronic invoicing in Europe Social and Environmental Responsibility requirements can become a perfect instrument for motivating and stimulating decision-makers to start using electronic invoicing.

Tags: e-Invoicing

Last update: 27-11-2011