Managing Automation - December 2007 - (Page 28) [ COVER STORY ] company announced plans to acquire BI software vendor Business Objects SA for $6.78 billion. The deal will expand SAP’s customer base and lay the groundwork for integrating real-time BI directly into the SAP applications using tools such as Business Objects’ Data Federator, an EII-style data virtualization tool. At a press conference announcing the acquisition, SAP CEO Henning Kagermann said the deal will allow SAP to “integrate the transaction space with the analytical space. We can now deliver business processes that are enriched by analytical applications and, in the end, bring more closed-loop process decision support to the market.” EVERYBODY WANTS TO GET INTO THE ACT maonline managingautomation.com RELATED ARTICLES: Business Intelligence: Getting in Sync with Real-Time Data www.managingautomation.com/BI Trying to Make Better Use of All that Data www.managingautomation.com/data2 Microsoft Adds Performance Management to Its Business Intelligence Offerings www.managingautomation.com/MicrosoftBI Directory Product Feature: Business Intelligence www.managingautomation.com/BIupdate SAP to Buy Business Objects www.managingautomation.com/SAPbuy COMPANIES MENTIONED: Cognos www.managingautomation.com/Cognos Composite Software Inc www.managingautomation.com/Composite IDS Scheer www.managingautomation.com/IDS Incuity Software Inc. www.managingautomation.com/Incuit Information Builders www.managingautomation.com/IBI Microsoft www.managingautomation.com/Microsoft SAP www.managingautomation.com/SAP3 Software AG (webMethods) www.managingautomation.com/webmethods Systar www.managingautomation.com/Systar Teradata www.managingautomation.com/Teradata TIBCO Software Inc. www.managingautomation.com/TIBCO But vendors of BI software aren’t the only ones beginning to address manufacturers’ need for more real-time visibility into operations. Providers of enterprise integration and business process management tools are attacking the same issue by giving manufacturers up-to-the-minute visibility into whether specific business processes are operating at, above, or below expectations. “[Business activity monitoring] enables Enterprise application and you to react to potential problems much BPM vendors such as TIBCO, IDS Scheer, and Soft- faster than you could with a BI tool.” ware AG’s webMethods unit — Matt Green, webMethods have long provided tools that let manufacturers model, test, deExchange Infrastr ucture element. Netploy, and operate automated busiWeaver Process Integration includes a new ness processes. These tools might event-processing feature. So, in addition to be used, for example, to create workhelping users integrate applications, the flows that link ERP-based order manProcess Integration product will help them agement with processes supported monitor business events and resolve alerts, by a CRM system. SAP officials say. Now these vendors are adding to While the notion of operational BI is clearly those tools business activity monion the rise among manufacturers and techtoring (BAM) engines that let users nology providers, operational BI should not be set up KPIs for those processes and thought of as a replacement for traditional BI, automatically monitor whether they experts say. The wide variety of technologies are meeting those benchmarks. Webthat can be used to enable operational BI will Methods, for example, offers BAM become increasingly important to manufacengines that monitor SAP-related turers needing to monitor events as they occur processes, as well as processes that and to respond quickly. But traditional BI will touch external suppliers. Similarly, still be important for supporting more strateIDS Scheer recently added BAM cagic business decisions. pabilities to its Aris BPM environ“We see the two augmenting each other,” ment through a par tnership with says Paul Hoy, global manufacturing industry rules-engine software provider Systar. director at Cognos. “They answer fundamenIn addition to generating aler ts tally different types of questions. Operational when a business process bogs down BI lets you look at how you’re doing right or a specified event occurs, those now. But it’s also important to have insights inBAM/BPM tools can kick off a sepato how you’ve been doing over time.” ■ rate workflow or business process aimed at fixing whatever has gone wrong. “It’s one thing to look in the rearview mirror and see how processes have behaved in the past. It’s quite another to have detailed visibility into processes on a minute-by-minute basis,” says Matt Green, product line director for process applications at webMethods. “BAM enables you to react to potential problems much faster than you could with a BI tool.” The encroachment of enterprise integration/BPM vendors into the operational BI space has begun to blur the lines between BI and BPM vendors and has stimulated a series of recent acquisitions and technology-sharing deals. TIBCO’s acquisition of Spotfire is one example. Like IDS Scheer, BI vendor Teradata has partnered with BAM technology provider Systar in order to add an event-monitoring capability to its BI environment. And application vendors also are beginning to show interest in the type of event monitoring and alerts that BAM technologies can provide. SAP, for example, recently released a new version of its NetWeaver platform that includes NetWeaver Process Integration, a replacement for NetWeaver’s ma December 28 2007 http://managingautomation.com http://www.managingautomation.com/BI http://www.managingautomation.com/data2 http://www.managingautomation.com/MicrosoftBI http://www.managingautomation.com/BIupdate http://www.managingautomation.com/SAPbuy http://www.managingautomation.com/Cognos http://www.managingautomation.com/Composite http://www.managingautomation.com/IDS http://www.managingautomation.com/Incuit http://www.managingautomation.com/IBI http://www.managingautomation.com/Microsoft http://www.managingautomation.com/SAP3 http://www.managingautomation.com/webmethods http://www.managingautomation.com/Systar http://www.managingautomation.com/Teradata http://www.managingautomation.com/TIBCO
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