Computer Careers Book
Thursday, October 07, 2004
ERP
This updates the article at:
ERP for Not Yet Techies
The ERP industry is still going strong, although it
is going through some consolidation. PeopleSoft bought
out J. D. Edwards in July 2003, making it the 2nd largest
ERP firm in the world, behind SAP of Germany.
Oracle is making a hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft.
The research firm Input says the federal government will
spend $7.7 billion on enterprise-resource-planning products
and services in fiscal year 2009. That's a 37% from FY 2004.
Much of it is for Department of Homeland Security, which
must deal with the problems of integrating the formerly
separate computer systems of the many different agencies
that were combined into it.
Another development is the use of RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification) tags to track the manufacturing process.
They could cut down waste of raw materials and on
employee theft. But will require sophisticated software
to track and monitor.
Microsoft will release an update of its ERP software
later in October 2004. Solomon 6.0 supposedly has been
enhanced in several areas, including project management,
accounting, analytics and reporting.
Estimated retail price tag for a single-user package: $4,500.
Jan Baan, who launched the Baan Co. in the mid-1990s, has
launched a new company, Cordys Inc., Cordys develops
collaboration and integration software and is based on
portal and integration technology from TopTier Software Inc.
Cordys Inc. thus will compete with SAP, Microsoft and
PeopleSoft.
PeopleSoft and IBM have just recently announced they are
forming a $1 billion alliance. Their deal calls for joint
development of a composite application framework. They
will also integrate IBM's WebSphere middleware into
PeopleSoft's applications.
This framework will enable businesses to use web services
to execute business processes.
#1 ERP company SAP AG announced its own composite application
framework two years ago, and its NetWeaver integration platform
in 2003.
Oracle, which is making a hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft,
began opening up its applications to integration last year.
PeopleSoft will use BPEL (Business Process Execution Language)
to manage the flow of business processes.
PeopleSoft and IBM plan to co-develop industry-specific composite
applications. The first three are Customer Profitability Management,
Network Lifecycle Management and Customer Loyalty and Retention.
They also plan on Distribution Channel Management for the insurance
industry and Integrated Risk Management for the financial industry.
