Managing Automation - December 2007 - (Page 50) [ INTEGRATION ] Transformation Integration TechWatch Industries Business Objects’ Live Office includes plug-ins that add a Crystal Report, or a Web intelligence component, into an Office document. Zurich-based IT consulting company working with manufacturers and retailers, notes that reporting on projects can now occur in real time, rather than at the end of the month. It saves time for the end user, it ensures data quality, and it produces easily accessible and accurate reports. “When I get in every morning, I get a scorecard and know exactly what’s going on without having to log into the SAP system and sift through everything to get the report I want,” Resource Informatik managingautomation.com CEO Bruno Schmid says. Both PerformancePoint and RELATED ARTICLES: Duet have sparked somewhat Microsoft Adds Performance Management of an epiphany for end users. to Its Business Intelligence Offerings www.managingautomation.com/MicrosoftBI “When people see an OBA, they know that’s what they BI Vendors Announce Strategic Partnership www.managingautomation.com/BI2 want. They just never had a way to articulate it people Business Intelligence: Getting in Sync with Real-Time Data are just not aware of the poswww.managingautomation.com/BI sibilities,” Bryant says. SAP to Buy Business Objects And now, through the www.managingautomation.com/SAPbuy OBA on-ramp program that Microsoft announced in July COMPANIES MENTIONED: (www.obacentral.com), more Business Objects vendors are gaining access www.managingautomation.com/BusinessObjects to the development kits to Epicor build OBAs. www.managingautomation.com/Epicor7 ERP vendor Epicor, for exMicrosoft ample, of fers Information www.managingautomation.com/Microsoft Worker, an OBA that allows QAD the use of Excel, Word, Outwww.managingautomation.com/QAD look, and SharePoint Server SAP to execute tasks within the www.managingautomation.com/SAP3 ERP system. With InformaSAS tion Worker, a user could rewww.managingautomation.com/SAS ceive an e-mail inquiry about maonline the status of an order. A simple right click on the e-mail accesses data from the ERP system, revealing the current shipment information. “It blurs the lines between the traditional dedicated system and new end-user experiences,” says James Norwood, Epicor’s vice president of product marketing. “It creates a bigger community of stakeholders in the core business system.” QAD, another ERP vendor, is also integrating with Microsoft Office using ActiveX calls, but the company is careful to balance comfort and new capabilities. According to Gordon Fleming, QAD’s chief marketing officer, Office should be used as an interface into the enterprise application, but not a control mechanism. Duet for Microsoft Office and SAP, for example, is built around broad integration. “But we struggle with why an enterprise user wants to go much further than taking summary data and embedding [it] into a report or PowerPoint,” Fleming says. “Being able to navigate and drive the application from within the Office environment doesn’t seem useful for customers It’s about looking at data and reporting, and in our opinion, not really about controlling the application.” Duet users, meanwhile, will see more capabilities very soon. SAP is adding integration with Microsoft’s SharePoint for collaboration, and with Microsoft’s Unified Communication Servers for presence control, which is a way to locate a person and find the most immediate way to contact him or her. SAP also recently announced its acquisition of Business Objects, a BI provider with a long-standing relationship with Microsoft through its Crystal Reports, which are integrated into the Visual Studio environment. Business Objects has a technology it calls Live Office, which includes plug-ins that add a Crystal Report, or Web intelligence component, into an Office document. Business Objects also has Crystal Xcelsius, which lay out ‘what-if’ scenarios visually for the end user. These visuals can be tied to Office to obtain interactive analytics embedded within a PowerPoint slide. When — or whether — this will become part of Duet has yet to be decided. What is clear, however, is that Microsoft Office is the most pervasive desktop productivity tool on the market, says Gaurav Verma, BI product marketing manager at SAS, which has an Office add-in for its analytical tools. And enterprise applications integration is an important catalyst for the information worker in need of new ways to be productive. “We need to co-exist with that large user base and tightly integrate with Office applications to give more power to the end user,” Verma says. ■ ma December 50 2007 Photo courtesy: SAP http://managingautomation.com http://www.managingautomation.com/MicrosoftBI http://www.managingautomation.com/BI2 http://www.managingautomation.com/BI http://www.managingautomation.com/SAPbuy http://www.obacentral.com http://www.managingautomation.com/BusinessObjects http://www.managingautomation.com/Epicor7 http://www.managingautomation.com/Microsoft http://www.managingautomation.com/QAD http://www.managingautomation.com/SAP3 http://www.managingautomation.com/SAS
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