SAP has turned its back on large-scale upgrades, announcing that it will accelerate delivery of innovations for SAP Business Suite 7 on a quarterly basis along a clear road map.
The software enhancements will be introduced in areas where the company believes customers can benefit most, including mobility, in-memory computing technology and cloud computing, allowing businesses to determine what they want to adopt without having to undergo major upgrade efforts.
In a statement, SAP said, “Traditional, large-scale upgrades can impact the entire enterprise and hamper productivity. In contrast, SAP plans to make evolutionary and breakthrough innovations available in a non-disruptive fashion on a quarterly schedule for the product and solution landscapes that customers have today. The key concept of evolutionary innovation is the delivery of enhancements to capabilities of the core suite of SAP software products. This will keep customers on the cutting edge in running their business.”
These enhancements will include user experience components such as side panels, landing pages or process extensions to mobile devices, as well as business analytics connected to business transactions, and application of in-memory technology to transform processes involving large data volumes.
SAP also announced that it will extend mainstream maintenance for the core SAP Business Suite 7 applications, including ERP 6.0, by five years until December 2010. Thia also applies to the NetWeaver platform, and for all current SAP enhancement packages.
“This gives SAP customers long-term predictability and removes the burden of upgrade across the enterprise for several years,” SAP said.
Further details of the plan, including incremental enhancement capabilities, will be announced at the upcoming SAPPHIRE NOW and SAP TechEd 2011 in Madrid in early November.
What are your thoughts on this plan? Send your comments to Freya Purnell at freya.purnell@insidesap.com.au, and we’ll publish an article on your feedback in a future edition of Inside SAP.
