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The following Strategy Partners reports are available:

• Der Markt für SAP Betriebsdienstleistungen - Outsourcing, ASP und Hosting (German) - click here for details
• SAP Users: Time to Evaluate your SAP Investment (English)
• SAP Business One – Simple, Affordable, Productive ERP for SMBs ? (English)
• SAP All-in-One - Future Proof ERP for Midsized Enterprises ? (English)
• „So wird abgerechnet“ Der Markt und das Angebot für HR-Dienstleistungen 2005/06 (German)
• Enterprise application integration and middleware

SAP Users: Time to Evaluate your SAP Investment

Helmuth Gümbel

Management Summary

In summary, it is essential for SAP-customers to re-valuate their situation because

•  The base of their software has been created with an older paradigm in mind

•  The technical foundation of the software needs a very solid overhaul (other vendors, like Oracle, have invested years ago into such a comprehensive makeover)

•  The outcome of an SAP only endeavor is less than certain

•  The exceeding cost and the complexity of their installed SAP-software are preventing users from innovating. The changes SAP introduces with the NetWeaver technology foundation to improve this situation will increase cost and complexity for at least the next three years.

•  The pressure on customers to constantly buy new software and upgrade R/3-licenses is relentless while customer benefits often are obscure

•  New license agreements that supersede the older R/3 contracts often contain unpleasant changes to the worse.

•  NetWeaver will have a long lasting impact on the Enterprise application landscape. It requires investments in skills and other resources and increases the dependency on SAP substantially. Companies using integration hubs, portals, and application servers from other vendors will have to invest into integration with NetWeaver.

•  The trend towards service oriented architectures gives customers the opportunity to implement independent multivendor application strategies. SAP seeks to preempt this trend by controlling application integration.

•  SAP seeks to accomplish its giant rearchitecture task through a series of fast paced iterations that force continuous and expensive migrations on customers with uncertain business value.

SAP CEO Henning Kagermann estimates that it may well take until 2009 to convert more than 90% of the SAP customer base to mySAP Business Suite . Rather than blindly following SAP's roadmap, customers should evaluate stabilization and independent best of breed integration scenarios.

You can view or download this white paper in PDF-format by clicking here: Whitepaper Time to Evaluate your SAP Investmentsr.pdf