The annual Sapphire user conference of SAP AG yielded a number of announcements by the company about new products and vendor partnerships. SAP has set up a new cross-functional unit dedicated to enhancing the role of the chief financial officer (CFO). The unit brings together individuals, partners, products and best practices to help CFOs improve business performance, manage risk and optimize financial activities. SAP said it is extending its integrated portfolio of products for CFOs with availability of the SAP Business Profitability Management application by Acorn Systems and SAP GRC Risk Management. The deal calls for SAP to resell Acorn's profitability-management software, sold under the name of Profit Analyzer, which runs on SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence. The Acorn application will be offered both as a standalone product and as part of a comprehensive set of performance-management tools. SAP has also created the SAP E-Sourcing on-demand application, intended to give companies quicker deployment times and more immediate cost savings in their sourcing and procurement operations. Companies will be able to engage in multiple sourcing activities, such as online auctions and requests for proposals. They will retain the option to extend to a complete source-to-pay process through the SAP Supplier Relationship Management application as their needs evolve. SAP's latest set of industry value networks (IVNs) are aimed at the aerospace and defense, automotive and travel and transportation industries. The IVNs will gather customers, partners and systems integrators to identify the business challenges of each industry. The groups will collaborate on the design and improvement of business processes and technology options. On the partnership side, SAP has joined with Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft Corp. in a new software appliance which allows access to SAP business processes and data via Microsoft Office applications on high-performance HP servers. The collaborative effort is known officially as Duet by SAP and Microsoft, powered by HP. SAP and Microsoft have extended their product roadmap for Duet software, allowing information workers to interact with select SAP business processes and data through Office applications. The companies will jointly enhance Duet with additional business scenarios, platform capabilities and development tools. Release of Duet 2.0 is planned for the end of 2008. SAP, Acorn Tool for CFOs: http://www.sap.com E-Sourcing On Demand: http://www.sap.com New Industry Value Networks: http://www.sap.com Duet Deal With HP, Microsoft: http://www.sap.com SAP and Microsoft Duet Roadmap: http://www.sap.com
