New Online Services From Microsoft For ERP

Redmond, Washington-headquartered Microsoft Corporation has announced a set of three new online services built around its ERP platform, Microsoft Dynamics.

The first service, Sites Service, is built on Azure platform and allows users to create websites in the Dynamics app. This is especially useful for customers who are looking for a seamless way to interact with the external environment such as customers (feedback and registration), vendors (request for quote), prospective employees (recruitment), etc. The service provides capabilities such as embedded intelligence and optimization models to provide analytics.

The second service, simply called “Commerce”, links ERP and ecommerce for the users by providing a single interface that hooks up to B2C e-commerce marketplaces, dedicated e-commerce storefronts, etc. The service has an inbuilt shopping cart functionality, enabling customers to interact with the user’s organization from within their own sites.

The third service, called “Payment”, handles payment transactions from Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP interface. This service works with leading payment processing services such as First Data Merchant Services Corporation, and handles all the major credit cards. Microsoft is on a agreement-signing spree with all major payment processing services across Europe and the rest of the world to bolster this particular service.

Read about the latest in online services being offered by Microsoft, here.

SAP Cuts Down Software Upgrade Time With New Release

Waldorf, Germany-based SAP announced its latest software upgrade package, christened “SAP enhancement package 4″, which it claims enables its customers to upgrade to the new version of SAP ERP software in shorter timeframe and with more discrete testing cycles.

SAP is the world’s largest business software company, with development centers in Bulgaria, Canada, China, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel and the US, staffed by about 52,000 employees serving around 76,000 customers in over 120 countries. The enhancement package 4 is the latest in a series of an innovative software delivery model that the company has been experimenting with since the beginning of this year (2008), wherein customers are able to update their ERP software versions with minimum disruption to their operations, thus reducing computer-administrator-headaches and employee-productivity-hour losses. Before these enhancement packages, it was not unusual for SAP customers to wait for up to 2 to 3 years for their upgrades. The package also gives the freedom to the customer to selectively upgrade the exact functionality that they are critically interested in deploying, right now.

SAP’s enhancement package 4 gives customers upgrade choices in the following lines of business: Finance, HR, Plant & Operations, Sales & Support, Procurement, Product Development & Manufacturing, and Industry Enhancements (such as aerospace / defense, automotive, defense and security, banking, consumer products, healthcare, higher education, insurance, oil and gas, mill products, mining, public sector, retail and wholesale, utilities, etc).

Read more about SAP’s new software delivery model here.