WALLDORF, Germany — SAP's top technology executive said yesterday that a new on-demand software product for the mid-market, code-named A1S, is now being used within SAP to automate a human resources-related business process, and that other processes would follow as SAP gets ready to formally introduce the enterprise application suite this fall.
Peter Zencke, a member of SAP's powerful executive board, said in an interview with Managing Automation at the company's headquarters here, that the development of the A1S product is on track and that, when it is released this fall, SAP will simultaneously announce a number of customers that have gone live with the product, including manufacturing companies.
Meanwhile, Zencke said, A1S has gone live in SAP's logistics center running a configure-to-order process to produce business cards for SAP employees. The process includes links to human resource systems and manufacturing systems, he said.
SAP is using the A1S system internally as well as testing it with customers to make sure it is evaluated as much as possible by the time of its formal introduction, Zencke said.
Noting that one of the key design goals is to have a system that is less complex to deploy than traditional software systems, Zencke said A1S will be delivered on one computer blade server and will consist of a "tight package of strong financials and strong manufacturing" capabilities as well as customer relationship management functions, among others. "Were calling it a horizontal extended suite," Zencke said.
He did note, however, that the introduction in the fall will be the first iteration of the new product. In this regard, he made the following points:
- SAP is still working on maximizing the performance of the new system. In comparison with the company's core ERP product, where 30% performance improvements per year have been a matter of course, the new system currently is "off by a factor of 10," Zencke said. But he said he was confident that SAP will improve it over time and that performance will not be an issue for customers at the time of introduction.
In a statement, SAP officials said A1S' "high computer power consumption" is a consequence of the system's design, which is based on a service-oriented architecture. The follow-up statement, issued to Managing Automation, added, "The ongoing performance optimizations and the rapid increase of hardware computing power will enable competitive throughput and response times even in a short time frame."
- The new system's interface will support HTML and be portal-based, Zencke said. Later, SAP will take steps to provide what he called a "smart client."
- SAP itself will host A1S this year, but will allow hosting by other parties once total cost of ownership issues are ironed out.
SAP first mentioned that it was working on A1S at a meeting with analysts and press in Las Vegas in December 2006. Earlier this year, SAP said it was creating a
dedicated organization and would invest up to 400 million euros to develop and bring the new product to market.
A1S is aimed at organizations with 50 to 500 enterprise application users. SAP's two other products for the mid-market, both licensed software products, are BusinessOne, targeted at organizations with five to 50 users, and
All-in-One, designed for organizations with 500 or more users.