Problems of integration of software companies and new trends

Océ, a leading provider of digital document management technology and services, reported financial figures yesterday, compared with the second quarter of 2006.

The CFO of Océ has commented on (read Beursmedia company financial information) about the decision pending in the field of business software (Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP). Currently, Océ and Imagistics, the Company acquired, were last year, with an ERP solution is different. Make the decisionselection) is a unique solution (providers.

Supplies are using SAP in North America. In Europe is being converted into SAP JDE. Imagistics, however, is the use of Oracle.

Oracle and SAP have a different background in Enterprise Software. The origin of SAP applications, it is, especially in the field of ERP to build. Oracle has traditionally been a provider of database, but has recently acquired Siebel and PeopleSoft, giving the company, the CRM software (Siebel) and human resource management areor ERP (Peoplesoft). Oracle still needs to integrate these solutions.

It is not easy to say which company is leading this fight, but both companies are aware that the real challenge is related to another trend, the supply of software services on demand. Internet technologies such as web services is already changing and will continue to change the settings in the software market.

In the old approach, provided that a supplier of application that was supportedFunctionality of business processes. The main problem with this, the fact is that ERP systems, which are not the only one in town. An entity need different functions for different purposes and these solutions were offered by different suppliers, a CRM package for client management, ERP for the production and management, but in the middle "...

In the middle there was nothing, really. That led to the discovery of middleware - software that a connection was differentApplications.

Oracle and SAP has come to this market. SAP NetWeaver and Oracle Fusion. But there is a gap to the middleware solutions for real web services.

And this is the key. Management Océ is known, but the investment market is likely to opt out of these developments and requirements (OCE) for a traditional solution, where one of two main suppliers.

© 2006 Hans Bool