News Topic - SAP
Articles 31 - 40 of most recent articles
SAP Launches Co-Innovation Lab in Tokyo
Location Takes Advantage of Region's Strength of Innovation and Quality to Collaborate on Solutions for Green IT, Enterprise SOA and Virtualization; Joins Original Lab in Palo Alto to Foster Co-Innova... [WebWire - Thursday, July 17, 2008]
WebWire – Jul 17, 2008 4:38 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Top Stories: Press Releases
Location Takes Advantage of Region's Strength of Innovation and Quality to Collaborate on Solutions for Green IT, Enterprise SOA and Virtualization; Joins Original Lab in Palo Alto to Foster Co-Innova... [WebWire - Thursday, July 17, 2008]
WebWire – Jul 17, 2008 4:38 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Top Stories: Press Releases
AmberPoint Joins SAP Co-Innovation Lab
Runtime SOA Governance Leader Brings End-to-End Visibility and Control to Heterogeneous Enterprise SOA Systems - - Oakland, CA, July 2008 -- AmberPoint announced today that it has joined the SAP® Co-I... [WebWire - Thursday, July 17, 2008]
WebWire – Jul 17, 2008 2:38 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Top Stories: Press Releases
Runtime SOA Governance Leader Brings End-to-End Visibility and Control to Heterogeneous Enterprise SOA Systems - - Oakland, CA, July 2008 -- AmberPoint announced today that it has joined the SAP® Co-I... [WebWire - Thursday, July 17, 2008]
WebWire – Jul 17, 2008 2:38 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Top Stories: Press Releases
News to know: Google; Microsoft; eBay; SAP; Apple
Notable headlines: Larry Dignan: Google's second quarter: What to expect Deb Perelman: The Techie Hall of Shame Phil Wainewright: How much is a unit of cloud computing? Joe McKendrick: Seven SOA experts explain how to 'just do it' Robin...
ZDNet – Jul 17, 2008 08:27 AM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology: Security
Notable headlines: Larry Dignan: Google's second quarter: What to expect Deb Perelman: The Techie Hall of Shame Phil Wainewright: How much is a unit of cloud computing? Joe McKendrick: Seven SOA experts explain how to 'just do it' Robin...
ZDNet – Jul 17, 2008 08:27 AM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology: Security
SAP, Oracle Boost Software Prices
SAP joined Oracle in raising prices on products, a sign industry consolidation is easing pressure to cut prices.
Wall Street Journal – Jul 17, 2008 01:00 AM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology
SAP joined Oracle in raising prices on products, a sign industry consolidation is easing pressure to cut prices.
Wall Street Journal – Jul 17, 2008 01:00 AM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology
Charles Arthur on the horror of drowning in a sea of data on an Excel spreadsheet
It's surprisingly easy to drown in data. Just as you can drown in water that just covers your mouth and nose - unconsciousness plus a two-inch puddle will do - so a comparatively small amount of what looks like useful data can balloon into completely unmanageable columns and rows of figures. So I thought while making some early stabs at integrating the government's newly released list of the address and other details of all the schools in England and Wales (get it from showusabetterway.com/call/data.html) with the league tables from 2007. Of course, these data being the product of civil servants rather than data designers, they came as an Excel spreadsheet. Scanning those, I realised how easily government creates and then drowns in seas of data. So, you have a school. With an address. And postcode. And number of pupils. A local authority number, establishment number, phone number. Those are the basics. Then there's the gender of entry (boy, girl, mixed?), institution type, age range, admissions policy, whether it's a feeder for the sixth form, number of pupils covered by statements of special educational needs (SSEN), the number covered by SAP, the number at Key Stage 4 or 5 at the start of the school year and the number at KS4 or KS5 under special educational needs or admissions policy. That's all before you get to any actual measures of performance - that is, how well things went in the testing. Wrestling with these vast tables (some of which have more than 30 columns), I reflected on how dangerous spreadsheets are. Spreadsheets are ad-hoc databases in which you can use the interdependencies of the different table elements to run "what-if" scenarios (what if the cost of staff goes up by 5%? What if the cost of materials goes up 5%? What if both happen at once? Oh, hell, there goes the dividend). That's their power. But that also means that it's easy to use them to try to measure things which don't need measuring, and use poor data structures that mean you can't do rigorous analysis. These spreadsheets were a miasma: for "age range", the entries included "Sep-17" (meaning it takes 17-year-olds in a September entry) and "13-19" (self-evident). The problem is that's a human-readable, not machine-readable description: if you're trying to do an in-depth performance analysis of tens of thousands of schools, then columns whose content might be a number or might be text yet are meant to indicate "age" will screw it up royally. What I find truly niggling is the suspicion that those Excel spreadsheets are used to do analysis inside government. Oh, sure, they're fun things, and require little training. But that obscures how badly the tables are structured and how they hide correlations and causations. All those leagues and tests - but what are they telling us? If the only way we have to visualise them is the (at best) three-dimensional plots of an Excel graph for data that have 12 or more variables, we're unlikely to pull out the real connections that make a difference.Related StoriesLetters and blogsTechnophile: HP2133 Mini-NoteFree Our Data: Met keeps crime stats under lock and keyBT to spend £1.5bn installing fibre-optic cable to boost web speedsKeith Stuart, Gamesblog: iPhone joins mobile game revolution
The Guardian – Jul 16, 2008 11:05 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology
It's surprisingly easy to drown in data. Just as you can drown in water that just covers your mouth and nose - unconsciousness plus a two-inch puddle will do - so a comparatively small amount of what looks like useful data can balloon into completely unmanageable columns and rows of figures. So I thought while making some early stabs at integrating the government's newly released list of the address and other details of all the schools in England and Wales (get it from showusabetterway.com/call/data.html) with the league tables from 2007. Of course, these data being the product of civil servants rather than data designers, they came as an Excel spreadsheet. Scanning those, I realised how easily government creates and then drowns in seas of data. So, you have a school. With an address. And postcode. And number of pupils. A local authority number, establishment number, phone number. Those are the basics. Then there's the gender of entry (boy, girl, mixed?), institution type, age range, admissions policy, whether it's a feeder for the sixth form, number of pupils covered by statements of special educational needs (SSEN), the number covered by SAP, the number at Key Stage 4 or 5 at the start of the school year and the number at KS4 or KS5 under special educational needs or admissions policy. That's all before you get to any actual measures of performance - that is, how well things went in the testing. Wrestling with these vast tables (some of which have more than 30 columns), I reflected on how dangerous spreadsheets are. Spreadsheets are ad-hoc databases in which you can use the interdependencies of the different table elements to run "what-if" scenarios (what if the cost of staff goes up by 5%? What if the cost of materials goes up 5%? What if both happen at once? Oh, hell, there goes the dividend). That's their power. But that also means that it's easy to use them to try to measure things which don't need measuring, and use poor data structures that mean you can't do rigorous analysis. These spreadsheets were a miasma: for "age range", the entries included "Sep-17" (meaning it takes 17-year-olds in a September entry) and "13-19" (self-evident). The problem is that's a human-readable, not machine-readable description: if you're trying to do an in-depth performance analysis of tens of thousands of schools, then columns whose content might be a number or might be text yet are meant to indicate "age" will screw it up royally. What I find truly niggling is the suspicion that those Excel spreadsheets are used to do analysis inside government. Oh, sure, they're fun things, and require little training. But that obscures how badly the tables are structured and how they hide correlations and causations. All those leagues and tests - but what are they telling us? If the only way we have to visualise them is the (at best) three-dimensional plots of an Excel graph for data that have 12 or more variables, we're unlikely to pull out the real connections that make a difference.Related StoriesLetters and blogsTechnophile: HP2133 Mini-NoteFree Our Data: Met keeps crime stats under lock and keyBT to spend £1.5bn installing fibre-optic cable to boost web speedsKeith Stuart, Gamesblog: iPhone joins mobile game revolution
The Guardian – Jul 16, 2008 11:05 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology
SAP To Migrate Customers To More Expensive Support Service
The software company plans to move customers from their current agreements to the new service's pricing model of 22% of license fees by 2012.
Information Week – Jul 16, 2008 9:30 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology: Software
The software company plans to move customers from their current agreements to the new service's pricing model of 22% of license fees by 2012.
Information Week – Jul 16, 2008 9:30 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology: Software
Business Objects Users Angry Over SAP Support Transition
Business Objects customers are ticked off over what they're calling a botched migration to SAP's support system.
PC World – Jul 16, 2008 9:05 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology
Business Objects customers are ticked off over what they're calling a botched migration to SAP's support system.
PC World – Jul 16, 2008 9:05 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology
SAP Customers Forced to Move to Pricier Support
PC World - SAP is set to force all customers to use its more costly enterprise support service.
Yahoo! – Jul 16, 2008 2:20 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology
PC World - SAP is set to force all customers to use its more costly enterprise support service.
Yahoo! – Jul 16, 2008 2:20 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology
Business Objects users angry over online support shift by SAP
SAP switched Business Objects users to its own online support site this month, six months after buying the BI vendor. But many of the affected users haven't been able to access the SAP site.
Computerworld.com – Jul 16, 2008 1:00 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology: Software
SAP switched Business Objects users to its own online support site this month, six months after buying the BI vendor. But many of the affected users haven't been able to access the SAP site.
Computerworld.com – Jul 16, 2008 1:00 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology: Software
SAP pulls the trigger on higher support costs
SAP has announced that it plans to transition all customers to its new Enterprise Support offering from January 1st, 2009. SAP is pitching this as a service that adds customer value but in reality it means a cost increase. According to the press release, SAP will incrementally ratchet support costs...
ZDNet – Jul 16, 2008 10:05 AM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology: Software
SAP has announced that it plans to transition all customers to its new Enterprise Support offering from January 1st, 2009. SAP is pitching this as a service that adds customer value but in reality it means a cost increase. According to the press release, SAP will incrementally ratchet support costs...
ZDNet – Jul 16, 2008 10:05 AM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology: Software