Did you know that bad data like innacurate customer information, vendor purchases and inconsistent supply chain management costs American companies over $600 billion every year? Because this anomaly is prevalent throughout enterprises, SAP has provided a solution within NetWeaver called Master Data Management (MDM). Of course, SAP isn't the only supplier of MDM and it is possible to create your own MDM solution making the MDM concept far-reaching.

On that note, we are pleased to announce the new SAP MDM (Master Data Management) All-In-One Guide . This guide will define MDM, introduce you to SAP's MDM software and provide best practices for those already with MDM. Full of Web multi-media, this guide provides an excellent source of learning material along with case studies and statistics.

Here are a few examples of what you will find:

•   Is MDM all hype?
•   SAP users seek master data management answers
•   Building a business case for MDM

Recent surveys suggest the MDM market will reach $10.4 billion by 2009. This translates into the fact the MDM is a part of the enterprise future. Be ahead of the curve with this SAP MDM All-In-One guide. We recommend you bookmark this guide because it will be updated continuously as new MDM content becomes available.

- Juli Austin, Assistant Editor 

TechEd '06 offered an educational class titled Harmonizing the User Experience of Composite Development Tools. This session was presented to share user development (UX) design best practices with independent software vendors (ISV) who intend to create composite applications for use on the NetWeaver backbone.

Jonathan Gordon of SAP described SAP's core design strategy to support developers.

Don't ignore best practices

Be sure to identify common user patterns. Developers appreciate seeing the same buttons in the same locations. Many well established UX designs exist in tools today.

Respect dynamic nature of tool users

Tool users work across multiple systems, some tool users change their profile over time, depending on tasks.

Support adaptability and change

Needs change as technology, methods and expertise advances. The tool user will either adapt the tool or leave it behind. Good developer tools will have increased usability with reduced complexity.

Always reflect reality

Be sure to conduct research. Explore the real world and collaborate with actual users. Hold beta testing sessions. Take that information and apply it to a user-centered design methods.

Gordon claims the ultimate goal for developer user tools is to have "extensible, scalable composite tools UX design based on the real world".

-Juli Austin

Assistant Editor 

At last week’s TechEd conference in Las Vegas, SAP put the breaks on the latest version of its software suite, mySAP ERP 2005. An upgraded version won’t be released until 2010. Until then, SAP plans releases of feature enhancements around specific modules.

The move was greeted by TechEd attendees as good news because many said that they didn’t want to undergo an upgrade project with the possibility of another upgrade in only a year or two. “ERP fatigue” is what one analyst called it.

“R” Ray Wang, principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc. told me that SAP is doing all it can to motivate customers to move to the latest and greatest version of SAP. The latest software were laid out like carrots – Duet, enterprise search and the Business Intelligence Accelerator – but Wang said SAP users are quietly saying they want a one or two year break before moving forward with big upgrade projects.

But questions remain about whether SAP is falling behind its schedule to service-enable the entire mySAP Business Suite in 2007. Already about 500 enterprise services have been released to the business process repository. How many enterprise services need to be released before the entire suite can be considered services enabled?

“I think they are definitely on track with the integration pieces,” Wang said. “The business services piece needs more work.

SAP’s new software delivery plan left room for Oracle to ruminate about whether SAP is falling behind. Oracle has been touting its Fusion middleware as the foundation of everything SOA.

“SAP appears to be rethinking their strategy as they lose application market share
to Oracle and confront the difficulties of moving their application software to a modern Service Oriented Architecture (SOA),” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison.

SAP struck back:

“Larry Ellison's statements in today's Oracle earnings press release about SAP's product and acquisition strategy are a complete misrepresentation," said Bill Wohl, vice president of product and solutions public relations, SAP. “Since January of 2003, SAP has consistently articulated and delivered on its vision for enterprise SOA following a course of organic growth combined with strategic acquisitions.”

More to come…

-Rob Westervelt 

SAP and Cisco announced a broad partnership today that integrates the SAP NetWeaver platform with Cisco’s services-enabled network architecture.

SAP will also launch three new applications that address governance, risk and compliance called the SAP GRC Repository, SAP GRC Process Control and SAP GRC Risk Management.

Two of the new applications are a result of SAP's recent acquisition of Virsa Systems Inc. The GRC repository centralizes company data including corporate policies, board of director minutes, regulations, compliance and control frameworks as well as key business processes. The repository will also enable customers to link to multiple control frameworks to address international regulations.

The SAP GRC Process Control application automatically aggregates business process risks for the entire enterprise, provides supporting evidence of compliance, and pinpoints control violations. The software will integrate automated control monitoring for SAP and non-SAP applications.

A new application developed by SAP called GRC Risk Management will act as an analysis tool for customers to analyze business risks across organizational entities, business processes and IT infrastructure. SAP has designed intuitive and collaborative processes to guide professional risk managers and business owners in identifying financial, legal and operational risks, analyzing business opportunities in light of these risks, and developing appropriate responses.

The joint marketing agreement in the United States and Canada addresses access and identity management between an SAP customer’s applications and its Cisco network architecture. Cisco embeds Web services in its networking software to address application Oriented Networking, unified Communications, security, mobility and identity services.

More to come including an interview with AMR Research's John Hagerty.

-Rob Westervelt