This arrangement with SAP sounds promising:
October 20, 1997, Issue: 653
Section: Trends
The Applications Connection
By Tom Stein
Suppliers of enterprise applications are pushing into the
knowledge-management market. SAP, the leading enterprise apps vendor,
uses a search-and-retrieval engine from Verity in its SAPNet applications.
The combination lets users look up all types of SAP-related information, such
as demos, training materials, video clips, and documentation stored in the
SAPNet repository.
Also, SAP is rolling out its own data warehouse called the Business
Information System. The product won't be available until next year, but SAP
is already talking with Verity to integrate its search engine into the business
warehouse. If this happens, the combined package probably won't be
available for at least another 12 months. But ultimately, this will give users
better access to information that is generated within their own SAP systems.
Users will be able to create their own channels and push that information to
the appropriate people and departments.
PeopleSoft said in September that it will embed Webcasting technology from
Actuate Software Corp. in San Mateo, Calif., into future releases of its
software suites. Actuate's flagship product, ReportCast, delivers corporate
content, such as financial reports, through Internet channels. "In general, we
don't want information generated within PeopleSoft to be kept locked up in a
fortress," says Rick Bergquist, VP of technology at PeopleSoft. "We want it
to be disseminated as wide as possible, and we want to push knowledge out
to workers to make them more effective."
"This makes all the sense in the world," says
Bill Ashworth, director of IS at credit-card company and PeopleSoft user
Advanta Corp. in Horsham, Pa. "Now, users have to go to our PeopleSoft
repository and pick out what they want. Instead, we want people to define
the information they want to see and then have it pushed out to them."
Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc. |
