This was a relatively quiet week, but here are some items that caught our attention:
- SAP Underpins On-Demand Strategy With the Proven Power of Partners
- New Release of SAP® Business ByDesign™ Gives Customers In-Memory Analytics, Support for Mobile Devices, and Customizable User Interfaces
- CDC Software Acquires TradeBeam, a Leading Cloud-Based Provider of Global Supply Chain Visibility and Trade Management Solutions
- UPS Helping Small and Mid-Size Businesses Compete Globally
- The US DOT’s Disappointing Strategic Plan (from Public Policy & Sustainability blog)
SAP held its SAPPHIRE conference this week, and if you couldn’t attend in person, you could watch presentations online at SAPPHIRE NOW. The big news from the event was the company’s new release of SAP Business ByDesign, its on-demand offering for small and midsize businesses. More than 100 charter clients in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, China and India are using SAP Business ByDesign, and SAP is committed to increasing its customer base and geographic presence in the months ahead.
This news is not logistics-specific, but it underscores the growing importance of the on-demand (aka software-as-a-service) model in the enterprise software market. Also, although SAP is positioning this offering to SMEs, the model is taking hold in multi-billion dollar companies too. This is certainly true in the transportation management systems (TMS) market. We just published our annual TMS study and the headline is “SaaS Sales Model Saves the Transportation Management Systems Market.”
The software-as-a-service model has also gained significant traction in the global trade management (GTM) solutions market (for related commentary, see “Beyond Software: The Role of Content and Connectivity in Global Trade Management”). This week, CDC Software acquired TradeBeam, a SaaS GTM solution provider. This is one of almost 20 enterprise software vendors CDC has acquired over the past few years. I haven’t been briefed by either company yet, so I don’t have much additional info. But at a minimum, this deal underscores how enterprise vendors are looking to close the GTM gap in their solution footprint, either organically (see Oracle press release from this past January) or via acquisition.
Finally, Bob Poole, a transportation policy expert who has advised the previous four Presidential administrations on transportation and policy issues, published a blog posting this week critical of the U.S. DOT Strategic Plan for 2010-15. You can view the plan and provide feedback at this website. The plan’s objective is to:
- Improve transportation safety
- Maintain transportation infrastructure in a state of good repair
- Promote transportation investments that bring lasting benefits to the Nation
- Foster livable communities
- Advance environmentally sustainable transportation policies
“At a time when it is increasingly acknowledged that the federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal course,” Mr. Poole wrote, “you would think the first thing a cabinet agency’s new strategic plan would do is attempt to figure out which of its historical functions are truly federal and should be continued. But that sort of prioritization is entirely absent from the U.S. DOT’s draft Strategic Plan…Instead we are given a vast array of poorly justified expansions of the federal role into every nook and cranny of how Americans and their goods should travel—as well as how and where we should live.”
Take a look at the plan and read Mr. Poole’s commentary. Do you agree with him? Post a comment and share your viewpoint!
(Note: SAP and Oracle are ARC clients).
