Russia: SAP obtained pass to work with government secrets

SAP NetWeaver became the first foreign ERP-system, certified by the Defense Ministry to work with secret government information. Admission to data labeled "Secret" will become, for SAP, a pass to a segment of power structures, and, similarly, a pass to a wide range of government customers.

SAP NetWeaver 2004 Application Server received certification from Russia's Defense Ministry for fulfilling the security requirements that were necessary to work with secret information. Alexander Federov, director of SAP CIS product development, explained to CNews that it took eight months for the product to be certified. Taking into account the complexity of the product, the Ministry of Defense held additional certification tests, and personally supervised the steps taken by the Certification Body to certify SAP.

Fedorov went on to explain that obtaining this certification is the first step for SAP entry to the military-industrial complex. According to Fedorov, by receiving this certification, SAP can now be seriously considered as a technological platform for the creation of the enterprise management systems.

The Ministry of Defense was, of course, the biggest, potential customer for SAP. With such a large infrastructure, which contains hundreds and thousands of enterprises, it is no surprise that the Ministry of Defense needs a unified management system for the maintenance of business activities to be built. After receiving this certification, the Ministry of Defense can now truly consider SAP as a potential ERP supplier.

SAP NetWeaver 2004 Application Server is now able to design automated systems up to the "1B" (security) level, and can process information containing government secrets. According to SAP, the company's next step will be to get certification from the Ministry of Defense for its other products.

Market experts, as a whole, have a positive opinion about the certification of SAP. According to Vladislav Kochetkova, a "Finam" analyst, fulfilling security requirements to process secret information indicates that national security is not threatened by the use of SAP; world leaders can now improve the quality of governance in Russian power structures to effectively meet objectives and reduce costs. "SAP's ability to work with undisclosed information gives them the opportunity to work with security agencies, and gives them access to a wide range of government bodies, each of which, in varying degrees, works with classified data," says Kochetkova in an interview with CNews.

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SOA: Promising and Long Lasting Trend?

As Gartner notes, approximately half of all 2007 major projects in the world were made on SOA. According to analysts, 60% of organizations will adopt the approach, and by 2010 it will be used in 80% of new systems. IDC forecasts that corresponding software expenses will constitute 11 billion dollars.

Whereas 2007 was the year of pilot projects giving an opportunity to customers to test SOA efficiency when developing and using business applications, the year of 2008 will witness double increase in SOA-related expenditures and further development of the most successful projects as customers are willing to implement the technology into business processes.

Experts at SAP believe that SOA is a perfect option for companies that previously had to choose between standard ERP solutions and pricey custom ones. Still with all its advantages (flexibility in changing business processes, service security and reliability, cuts in operational IT costs) SOA is not a panacea for all technology integration problems a company may face.

Expert forecasts concerning SOA advancement in Russia are pretty optimistic. Up to 70% of projects will use SOA in 2008 and at least one of the reasons for this is that all the current middleware platforms some way or another already use SOA at present. Various verticals demand SOA implementation however only a few, Finance and Telecom, have mature enough IT processes and sufficient budgets to start off with SOA.

Forrester analysts expect leading software providers will spend the next couple of years on developing more dynamic applications with better support of cross-functional business processes. Although the demand for SOA is growing, they will have to find new ways to promote their business applications. Hopefully SOA will be a more promising and long lasting trend than all the previous technological tendencies as the focal point of SOA is business but not technologies.

Source: Cnews (in Russian)

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SAP CIS made the top 3 selling SAP units worldwide

This year SAP CIS made the top 3 selling SAP units worldwide,” - said Jovan Maryanovich, SAP CIS Managing Director, at SAP Effective Enterprise Resource Planning Forum in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Although the US and Germany lead SAP’s sales of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, CIS made the top 3 selling SAP units in 2007 - reported Jovan Maryanovich, SAP CIS Managing Director. As it turned out the SAP’s share of enterprise applications market reached about 45% in the CIS, according to IDC and Gartner.

Jovan Maryanovich says SAP owns over 50% of ERP systems market in Kazakhstan and this achievement is quite remarkable. However KZ has still a long way to go till it catches up with the CIS sales leader Russia. According to IDC Russia analysts the sales of ERP solutions in KZ reached $14 million in 2006 (approximately $1 per head), compared to $30 million in Ukraine (approximately $0.65 per head) and to a colossal sum of $365.12 million in Russia (more than $2 per head) or $1 million per day. Interestingly enough is that the EPR prices in Kazakhstan and Russia are absolutely equal.

The major SAP’s competitor on both the CIS and world market of business applications is the Oracle Corporation. Elena Semenovskaya, Software Research Director at IDC, said in an interview to CNews.KZ that the highest local demand is for ERP Financials and Supply Chain Management applications produced by both competitors.

Source: CNews

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