Sap News & Articles

Yesterday's theme of integrating social software and business data (via application integration) was echoed by Jive Software (news, site). They have announced a new agreement that will see SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence onDemand solutions integrated into Jive's Social Business Software suite.

Open Text -- who's web content management strategy has been in the news lately -- also has a busy, busy enterprise content management arm, in case we needed reminding.

Recently the company was acknowledged by SAP via a Certified Integrations award. The nod is meant to give customers the confidence to use SAP's applications in tadem with the Open Text ECM Suite as the basis for enterprise-wide information lifecycle management.

Open Text recently received U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Records Management certification for a selection of its records management software offerings. Does this mean it’s six or seven-hundred times more expensive than similar solutions, works most of the time and there is at least one retired general on the board of directors at a generous salary?

Open Text kicked off its global Content World conference today in Orlando, Florida. The ECM giant expects it to be the largest conference in history with more than 1500 participants registered to attend.

Pre- and post-conference workshops, breakouts, training, GlobalStar awards, partner schmoozing, showcasing its ECM solutions, Universal Studios trips… Open Text is going to be busy in the next few days.

The event features a conference-within-a-conference program. Attendees tailor their conference experience: product/technology-specific tracks are available in the morning, with broader enterprise views offered in the afternoon.

One of the coolest things about this event, aside from all the wealth of OT and Enterprise CMS knowledge, is that there’s no printed conference brochure. Open Text went green and provided all attendees with wireless PDA-like devices instead of a paper booklet. Delegates can use the device for polling, conference program navigation, attendee profiles search and text messaging.

Conferences are usually coupled with major announcements. Today, Open Text announced that SAP will resell Open Text Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) under the name the SAP Invoice Management application by Open Text. As part of this agreement, SAP will also resell Open Text’s document capture solution Invoice Capture Center, from Open Text’s recent acquisition of Captaris, under the name optical character recognition (OCR) option for SAP Invoice Management.

Open Text clearly shoots for being the ultimate ECM provider, and is here to prove it with all the recent product releases, acquisitions and partnerships. We’ll hear more from Open Text in the next few days, stay tuned! In the meantime, watch daily podcasts on YouTube and follow #OTContentWorld on Twitter.

Now that the acquisition of Captaris by Open Text is no longer an intention but a fact, what does the Enterprise CMS giant plan to do with this Washington-based provider of document management and delivery solutions?

Open Text has announced today the release of “next generation” Web Solutions. The fancy name is, in essence, a new release of the company’s Web CMS child — RedDot. It’s a name change and a total rebranding makeover. With all the underlying RedDot WCM technology still in the backbone, it is now called Web Solutions.

The focus of this new release is on intranets, extranets, Enterprise 2.0 solutions and Web 2.0 tools that come armed with greater security and control over social media initiatives.

We had an opportunity to chat with Stefanie Lightman, VP of Marketing at Open Text, to get the scoop on the new offering.

With another integration under their belt, Day Software continues to prove the value of building a content management solution based on the Java Content Repository (JCR) standard.

In this case, SAP has slapped Day on the back for integrating Communiqué (CQ) with the SAP NetWeaver enterprise portal, enabling their customers to integrate business content and processes directly with the portal.

What’s the best way to insure viability while the threat of global economic recession looms?

Take on more venture funding, and Alfresco did just that to the tune of US $9 million.

Where did the money come from? It was a group effort led by SAP Ventures and including long-time Alfresco backers Accel Partners and Mayfield Fund.

According to Alfresco, the funds will be used to support “continued growth into the enterprise content management market, including product development and acceleration of global expansion plans, particularly in the German, U.S. and Asian markets”.

This news could not come at a better time for Alfresco. With recession fears on everyone’s mind, this influx of cash should calm the concerns of both employees and customers.

Kudos to Alfresco on their good fortune and to SAP Ventures for what appears to be a wise investment.

Open Text announced their data integration tool Genio, adopted after the Hummingbird purchase in ‘06, will become a key part of incumbent content and data integration strategies.

This morning, Day — which just joined IBM’s ECM ValueNet program — announces an expansion of its existing SAP integration capabilities to feature support for SAP NetWeaver Portal 6.0. This means enterprise users can add business content and functionalities into existing SAP NetWeaver Portal environments with Day’s out-of-the-box portlets.

These portlets enable managed content, dynamically associated with SAP NetWeaver Portal, to appear in iViews. This also supports presentation capabilities, with available inclusion of portal navigation and TREX search.

Other boons include multi-language support, content sharing, personalization, inter-portlet communication, and support for LDAP and Single Sign-On. Learn more about the offering at the Day website.