DIMENSION DATA NOW A SAP-CERTIFIED PROVIDER OF CLOUD AND HOSTING SERVICES FOR SAP® SOLUTIONS; STANDARDISES CLOUD SERVER IMAGES FOR DEPLOYMENT OF SAP SOLUTIONS

New Pre-configured Images Enable Rapid Deployment of SAP Software on Dimension Data’s Cloud Platform

Kuala Lumpur, 19 May 2014 – Dimension Data, the USD 6 billion global ICT solutions and services provider, today announced it is now a SAP-certified global provider of cloud and hosting services for SAP® solutions. Dimension Data also released a set of pre-configured cloud server images that makes it easy, safe and cost-effective to provision an environment of SAP solutions. With Dimension Data’s cloud server images for the SAP ERP application available for its cloud clients, users can, in most cases, have a new cloud server operational on Dimension Data’s Managed Cloud Platform (MCP) within 30 minutes.

Dimension Data offers integrated, enterprise-class cloud services that enable businesses to leverage the flexibility of the cloud for both temporary and mission-critical data centre workloads, such as enterprise applications and production web applications. Dimension Data’s hosting and cloud services have been certified by SAP for meeting high-quality operational standards to deliver SAP software, including the SAP ERP, SAP Supply Chain Management, SAP Customer Relationship Management, SAP Product Lifecycle Management and SAP Supplier Relationship Management applications and SAP BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence solutions. This certification applies to Dimension Data’s MCPs globally for the next two years.

Dimension Data clients can host their own environments running SAP solutions on Dimension Data’s cloud infrastructure or utilise Dimension Data’s cloud server images for SAP ERP. These consist of a set of standardised builds involving the SAP enhancement package 7 for SAP ERP 6.0, Microsoft Windows® 2008 R2 and Microsoft SQL Server® 2012 that can be deployed in minutes onto a virtual machine in the Dimension Data Cloud.  

Dimension Data’s public cloud and managed hosting environments enable clients and partners to develop, test and customise SAP applications quickly while reducing upfront capital expenses (capex)  and ongoing operating expenses (opex), delivering the benefits of mobility, flexibility and scalability for local and global SAP solution-based environments. Dimension Data supports the full data centre lifecycle of both mission-critical applications such as SAP ERP and temporary workloads. Its cloud capability enables clients to reduce the time it takes to make changes to their implementation of SAP applications, helping improve their agility to meet strict business timelines while reducing risk and increasing uptime.

Dimension Data’s cloud services leverage the company’s deep data centre and networking expertise and high-performance global cloud platform.  For enterprise clients and SAP’s ecosystem partners, Dimension Data’s combination of systems integration and cloud capability helps ease the transition of SAP applications from traditional data centres to a cloud environment.

“Our enterprise clients and provider partners can benefit from the right size, right scale and right time characteristics of the cloud to deliver significant cost savings and efficiency gains for their cloud-based SAP applications coupled with our experience in optimising the data centre,” said Steve Nola, Group Executive of Dimension Data’s IT-as-a-Service Business Unit. “SAP is the world's leading provider of enterprise software and services, and the certification of our cloud and hosting services is a vital part of our global strategy to enable clients to offload their SAP applications in production environments and temporary workloads.”

As an SAP global partner and SAP-certified provider of hosting and cloud services, Dimension Data will provide a cost-effective delivery model for mission-critical SAP applications. To achieve this certification from SAP, Dimension Data’s infrastructure, physical and logical security measures, processes, portal, and technical staff went through extensive review by SAP to validate the operational integration of its support of SAP applications to help ensure compliance with SAP's requirements for quality, availability and security. As an SAP-certified provider of cloud and hosting services for SAP solutions, Dimension Data can perform a range of IT services related to SAP applications, from initial proof-of-concepts to rapid deployments for customers of their SAP solutions.

To further ensure ongoing high standards for the management of SAP solutions, SAP-certified providers of cloud and hosting services for SAP solutions undergo a rigorous assessment of their delivery and support capabilities every two years by SAP’s outsourcing partner certification group.

Today, Dimension Data’s cloud services can be accessed globally via MCPs in San Jose, Calif., and Ashburn, Va., U.S.; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Sydney and Melbourne, Australia; Johannesburg, South Africa; London, UK; Tokyo, Japan; and Hong Kong.

In addition to the newly released images for the SAP enhancement package, Dimension Data provides users with an online service catalogue of pre-configured commercial software as an operating system (OS) image that incurs additional charges when deployed as a server. This software can be software installed on the OS image or it can be part of the OS image itself. Dimension Data cloud software is priced hourly or monthly and provides the same pay-for-use flexibility of using cloud servers and cloud files.

Dimension Data has pre-built accelerators for small-, medium- and large-scale cloud deployments of SAP solutions. All of the cloud server images include Microsoft Windows® 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition, Microsoft SQL Server® 2012 Enterprise Edition and the SAP enhancement package 7 for SAP ERP 6.0. To activate the service, users must provide their own licences for SAP ERP.

Chaos Expected as Manufacturers Rush to ‘GST-Ready’ their ERP System

As the April 1, 2015 deadline looms, Malaysian manufacturers are only starting to realise the daunting efforts to overhaul their most critical IT system – the ERP, to be GST-ready

KUALA LUMPUR, 4 March, 2014 – iContro Software Sdn Bhd (‘iContro’), the leading 100% local Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) brand and provider, which has been closely involved in the local ERP scene over a decade, foresees that due to the government’s final resolve to implement the 6% GST to replace the current sales and services tax – businesses across all sectors, particularly the hugely-ERP reliant Manufacturing Sector, will be launched into a “…chaotic period as never seen before, in rushing to replace their unworkable legacy ERP systems.”

Its CEO Frank Lee, says that a handful of manufacturers are beginning to realise how little time they have left but, “When it finally dawns upon the majority of Malaysian manufacturers that their ERP system are simply too old to be upgraded to be GST-compliant, that is when there will be a mad scramble by top management to put ERP overhaul as the priority of their IT budgets.”

An April 2012 survey by the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM), coincidently shows that over 60% of businesses responded that they were ready to implement GST, while 40% indicated that only basic preparations such as attending seminars and training to familiarise themselves with the GST scheme, have been made.

Deloitte Malaysia more closely estimates that less than 5% of businesses have started getting themselves ready.

Greater Complications for Manufacturing
According to Lee, there will be imminent chaos that will hit the local manufacturing scene – starting as early as the first quarter of 2014 , and carrying on until the last minute prior to the nation’s Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation deadline on 1st April, 2015.

Furthermore, the introduction of GST is even more complicated for Malaysia’s manufacturing sector because the ERP system will need to accurately identify and capture the tax imposed or exempted details at the various raw material processing stages of the finished goods being manufactured.

Lee says, “Currently we know of over 270 items that will be exempted from GST, and not even including the various state, zone or incentive tax inclusions or exemption that apply to specific manufacturing businesses operating in Malaysia.”
“With no prior experience or local business knowledge in implementing a GST-compliant system for a core IT systems as massive as the ERP, many foreign IT brands will be challenged to supporting their base of manufacturers customers,” says Lee.

He says that there confusion and frustration in swapping over to newer ERP alternatives as many of the large US and European ERP brands will face significant problems to assist their IT budget-strapped manufacturing customers to have a working and proven GST-compliant ERP system.

For the record, today there are over 150 countries worldwide that have already adopted GST.  For a quick comparison, Singapore adopted GST in 1994  and Australia in 2000.

In trying to learn from experience, Australia emulated Singapore in GST adoption and implementation. And despite Australia having a much more mature and organized business culture compared to Malaysia, they took almost 3 years to finally stabilise a workable model.

“This is why Malaysian businesses, especially those in the manufacturing sector that have the gigantic ERP that is heavily ‘system-affected’ by GST,  need to wake up now to the enormous work at hand. The best advice is to start making crucial decisions on your ERP system NOW,” ends Lee.

制造业廠商趕緊为其企業資源計劃 (Enterprise Resource Planning ，‘ERP’)系統准备就緒

隨著2015年4月1日的最後期限臨近，馬來西亞製造商才開始意識到全面改革  ERP系統为商品及服務稅实施做准备的 艱鉅努力

吉隆坡，2014年3月04日 -  iContro軟件有限公司（iContro Software Sdn Bhd ，’iContro'），100％自產自銷的馬來西亞企業資源規劃系统供應商，預测6％的消費稅实施以取代目前的銷售及服務稅将导致些许混亂如所有部門，特別是现采用ERP系统的製造業赶着更換其不可行的原有ERP系統。

李俊輝，iContro总监表示大多數馬來西亞製造商，他們的ERP系統都太舊而無法升級為GST兼容，也就是說ERP升级将成为科技預算的優先順序。

在2012年4月馬來西亞製造商聯合會的調查下，巧合表明，超過60％的受訪企業业者說他們準備實施商品及服務稅，而40％的人表示只做着基本的準備工作，如參加研討會和培訓，與熟悉商品及服務稅方案。

馬來西亞Deloitte更緊密地估計，不到5％的企業以開始準備就绪。

製造业具较大的挑战

據李某，迫在眉睫的混亂將打擊本地生產业 - 首發早在2014年的第一季度并持续直到全國的商品及服務稅（GST），實施期限於4月1日，2015年的最後一刻之前。

此外，馬來西亞的製造業商品及服務税实施更是複雜，，因為ERP系統將需要準確地識別並捕獲在成品所製造的各種原材料加工階段的稅收徵收或免徵的細節。

李說，“目前我們知道超過270項目將为消費稅免除，甚至不包括適用於在馬來西亞經營特定製造業務的區域或激勵性的稅收夾雜物或豁免。”

他說，许多大型美國和歐洲的ERP品牌將在如何協助有科技預算拮据问题的製造業业者实施消費稅兼容的ERP系統面臨顯著的問題。

記錄在案，今天全球有超過150個國家已經採用GST。對於一個快速的比較，新加坡在1994年通過消費稅和澳洲在2000年。

試圖從經驗中學習，澳大利亞效仿新加坡消費稅採用和實施。儘管澳大利亞有一個更加成熟和有組織性的商業文化相比，他們用了近3年来稳住一個可行的商品及服務稅模式。

“這就是為什麼馬來西亞的企業，特別是那些在製造業采用大量ERP系统的公司需要马上着手開始针對商品及服務稅为ERP系統作出重要決定，” 李結尾。

SAP Innovates With New Release of SAP Business ByDesign Solution

SAP NEWSBYTE — Dec. 16, 2013 — Reaffirming its commitment to provide independent companies and subsidiaries worldwide a flexible, cost-effective mid-market cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced new capabilities for the SAP Business ByDesign® solution. The updates leverage SAP HANA®, mobile and cloud technology, and enable businesses to rapidly adapt processes to capitalize on ever-changing market dynamics.

“We continue to honor our commitment to SAP Business ByDesign customers and leverage the strength of the SAP Cloud portfolio and SAP HANA to deliver innovations that help them run efficiently and effectively their entire business in the cloud,” said David Sweetman, senior director, Global Product Marketing, SAP Business ByDesign. “The new capabilities in the latest release help companies manage more data and transactions in more places with greater speed and simplicity.”

Features and enhancements delivered in the latest release of SAP Business ByDesign include:

·         Expanded global footprint: New country version for Japan augments existing Asia Pacific regional versions for China, India, Australia and New Zealand.

·         In-memory capabilities: Availability on the SAP HANA platform combines both transaction processing and analytics on a single platform, helping reduce delays and inefficiencies inherent in parallel operational and business intelligence systems, and enabling companies to aggregate, correlate and assess countless bits of information and scenarios to determine the best course of action faster than ever before.

·         Enhanced pricing flexibility: Greater flexibility to price products and services and suggest optional additional or alternative purchases helps companies to drive increased purchases. Expanded competitive pricing mechanisms enable companies to drive special pricing to particular audiences based on user-defined criteria such as region, type or class of customer and industry-specific criteria. Pricing can also be based on two dimensions, such as by quantity of pieces or net weight.

·         Greater mobility: The SAP® Business in Focus mobile app enables users to analyze budget forecasts, visualize financial information, collaborate through an enterprise social network and get real-time insight from internal and external cloud applications via iPad.

“As an SAP partner and consultant, we practice what we preach — we are running the latest version of SAP Business ByDesign on SAP HANA and have seen the solution’s impact to streamline business processes,” said Inge Kipping, CEO, anthesis. “We like the speed, flexibility, scalability and support from SAP HANA. Continued updates allow us to take advantage of business best practices and rapid processing speed in the cloud.”

SAP Business ByDesign covers a wide range of business areas, including financials, human resources management, sales and marketing, sourcing and purchasing, customer relationship management and supply chain management, and is an integral part of the SAP® Cloud portfolio.

Dismal level of ERP ‘Computerisation’ in Local Manufacturing Sector

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) specialist iContro reveals largest challenge faced by process-based manufacturers in Malaysia and region

KUALA LUMPUR, 26 November, 2013 – iContro Software Sdn Bhd (‘iContro’), 100% homegrown, Malaysia-based ERP provider, today shared its recent findings on the current state of computerisation in the Manufacturing sector, the 2nd largest economic industry in the country.

Frank Lee, CEO of iContro, says that despite the great progress in other ICT areas such as mobility, digital media, Big Data and cloud computing; the advancements in the biggest enterprise system – the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), is still sadly lacking.

“The behemoth ERP system is the core of all large enterprises and business operations whether in the public sector, telco, financial and retail. Yet, the advancements and technological upgrades within the ERP is one of the slowest and most painful.”

Lee particularly singles out the state of ERP systems in Process-based manufacturers, which he deduced is still ‘…at a very basic level of computerisation and automation’.

“As a significant portion of local manufacturers are process-based, it is not far-fetched to assume that this is currently one of the least automated sectors in the country, despite it being a top economic activity for Malaysia.”

In addition to the ERP systems of process-based manufacturers being the least ‘computerised’ or ‘automated’ of all other manufacturers, iContro estimates that less than one third of Malaysia-based process manufacturers even deploy an ERP system for their operations.

“The main reason for this dismal ERP phenomenon in Malaysia and the region, is because most ERP systems available cannot cope with the highly complex nature of  process-based manufacturing.

Even if they have some kind of ERP system, they are mostly limited to handle the manufacturers’ financials, distribution or HR functions only instead of being optimised to integrate and automate the actual and entire process manufacturing operations,” explains Lee.

iContro Dominates in Paints
Over the last 18 years, iContro has been focusing on developing and providing ERP systems for complex business operations. The company today offers a comprehensive suite of ERP solutions across sectors, but hold current dominance of paint manufacturers (which are in the category of process-based manufacturing).

“Most of the paint manufacturers in Malaysia today use iContro as their default ERP – simply because it works extremely well to support all the complexities in their niche operations, and is much more affordable than other international ERP brands in the market,” shares Lee.

Besides continual upgrades to these existing manufacturing clients, he says that iContro is getting interest from players in other sectors such as Building Materials related, Oil & Gas and Property.

 “The ERP market in Malaysia is slowly but surely undergoing a transformation as companies scrutinize that the capabilities of their IT purchases can actually perform what the business requires, in the face of ever growing competition in the Market Place” he ends.

本地製造業的企業資源計劃 “電腦化”趋势慘淡

企業資源規劃（Enterprise Resource Planning，ERP）專科iContro揭示在馬來西亞和区域基於流程的製造商的最大挑戰

吉隆坡， 26日讯 -  iContro軟件有限公司（“iContro'），100％自產自銷的馬來西亞企業資源規劃系统供應商，今天分享了其最近对本地第二大的經濟体系製造業进行的調查，以揭发其现電腦化的状态。

李俊輝，iContro总监表示，儘管其他科技通信領域，如流动科技，电子媒體，大數據和雲端計算都有显著的進步，企業内最大的系统- 企業資源規劃（ERP）的升级仍然欠奇缺。

說明注：製造業一般分為兩種類型 - 過程和離散，即早期是非常複雜的，因為它涉及的產品，一旦產生就不能再被分解成它的組成部分。工藝製造的實例包括化學品，原料物質，石油和天然氣燃料，醫藥品和生物工程。

“由於本地基於過程的製造商占大部分，并不难假設，這是目前一個在國內最少自動化的行業，儘管它是馬來西亞頂級的經濟活動。”

iContro主宰油漆市场
在過去的18年内，iContro一直專注於開發和提供ERP系統的複雜業務。該公司今天提供了一整套跨部門的ERP解決方案，并保持當前在塗料製造业（這是基於流程的製造類）的霸主地位。

在馬來西亞大多數的塗料製造商今天使用iContro作為其ERP的选择 - 只是因為它的系统非常好，比其他在市場上的國際系统， 更能支持他們的利基業務的所有複雜性，“李俊輝表示.

“馬來西亞的ERP市場緩慢， 但正穩步地經歷著一場蛻變為企業審查其科技化的採購能力，實際上它能進行什麼樣的業務需要，以面对在市場上日益增長的競爭面前”，他結束。

Malaysia as Vital R&D Hub for Exact’s Cloud Portfolio

Exact to Expand Regional Centre in Malaysia with Increased Workforce and Funding

Kuala Lumpur, 4 July 2013 – Global software company, Exact will be expanding its regional development centre in Malaysia by adding headcount by as much as 50 percent this year. The regional centre will also receive a significant portion of Exact’s additional research and development funding for 2013 to finance the development of Exact’s new cloud offering.

Exact’s Asia Development Centre (ADC) houses Exact’s international software development team and serves as a regional hub for Southeast Asia. The Research and Development (R&D) division in the regional centre become an important focus point for the Dutch-based ERP company, as it fuels the expansion and development of Exact’s cloud portfolio, that will be internationally rolled out progressively in the coming months.

Hartmut Wagner, Managing Director of Cloud Solutions, Exact.

“As the cloud software represents a step away from the technology used in Exact’s other major product lines, we definitely need to form different teams within the ADC and seek out new employees that have the necessary skillsets to further develop our cloud-based offering,” said Hartmut Wagner, Exact’s Managing Director of Cloud Solutions.

The ADC started with an initial workforce of 56 people in 2000 and grew to 232 employees in 2012. Exact is planning to add another hundred people in 2013. In the early years of the ADC, the team focused on localizing the existing software products of Exact for the Asian markets and reworking the software to ensure they were tailored to its regional customers, who are predominantly SMEs. With the new cloud offering came a shift in the ADC’s responsibilities.

“For the development of our cloud portfolio, we need people that bring different skills than we needed before. That is why we have been actively hiring and putting in place staff retention programs which include career growth plans based on the expertise of the individuals. We are highly positive to achieve this growth within ADC” said Srinivas Sampathkumar, Product Development Director of Exact ADC.

S.Srinivas, Product Development Director, Exact Asia Development Centre, sharing at the Exact ADC’s town hall meeting.

Srinivas added that the ADC is primarily looking to recruit software engineers who are familiar with cloud computing and programming to join the R&D division. The company has increased its R&D funding in 2012 from 11 percent to 14 percent of total revenues. A major part of the additional R&D funding will be ploughed into the expansion of Exact’s cloud portfolio, Exact Online.

“This expansion of our regional R&D hub is an important milestone for Exact. It is a move in the right direction as cloud solutions become more ubiquitous. We are optimistic that we will see a positive take-up among the SMEs as cloud solutions will provide them with a most cost-effective option with the pay-per-use model. What we need now is the right talent that are the best fit to build these solutions,” ended Wagner.

Exact’s ERP solutions are designed for small to mid-sized businesses especially those in the manufacturing, wholesale distribution sector and professional services companies. Its clients in Malaysia include Secret Recipe, Slumberland Malaysia and Adecco.

Introducing Progress Pacific: Freedom for Cloud and Mobile Apps

Fundamental New Development Approach Provides Choice of Data Sources, Deployment Environments and Business Logic Tools

Singapore, June 12, 2013 - Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), today introduced Progress® Pacific™, a powerful, easy-to-use platform for building and managing “connected apps” on any cloud, mobile or social platform. Connected applications integrate with real-time data from multiple sources for faster business reaction, analysis and problem solving. Progress Pacific is a fundamental new approach that gives businesses and independent software vendors (ISVs) the freedom to choose the data sources, deployment environments and business logic tools that best fit their needs.

This new platform is the foundation of a major PaaS (platform-as-a-service) transformation Progress previously announced to address customer and partner demand in one of the fastest growing IT markets. Today, businesses of all sizes are experiencing unprecedented market pressures and are turning to rapidly developed software applications for competitive advantage. These are typically confined to a specific service platform and are insufficient without integrated access to data from disparate SaaS, relational database, Big Data, social, CRM and ERP systems. Progress Pacific will uniquely solve this problem and eliminate lock-in with the industry’s most comprehensive set of integrated capabilities, including:

 Rapid Development using a “Cool” Technology: Powerful, standards-based business applications can go from idea to reality faster with innovative point-and-click, drag-and-drop tools in a standard browser, saving time and money while also providing deployment freedom. To enable this, Progress has acquired Rollbase, Inc., a privately held independent software vendor based in Saratoga, CA, that was recently named “One of the Cool Vendors in PaaS” by Gartner, Inc.* Over 10,000 users are using custom Rollbase™ applications in10 languages globally. See demo.

 Connection to the Most Data Sources: A comprehensive set of SaaS, relational database, NoSQL, Big Data, social, CRM and ERP sources can be tapped into for automated, context-aware applications. Technology from Progress DataDirect®, the world’s leading data connectivity provider, helps to unlock an application’s full value by allowing faster integration, analysis and decision making. See demo.

 Unique Hybrid Deployment Options: Unlike other vendors where deployment options are restricted to either cloud or on-premise, Progress Pacific offers developers the opportunity to create cloud apps that can be deployed in multiple environments (cloud, on-premise, hybrid) as well as connect to existing applications. By working harmoniously with current applications, including those using OpenEdge®, Corticon® and other technologies, critical data is accessible, business logic is preserved and investments are protected.

Availability:
The Progress Pacific platform will be generally available later in Progress’ fiscal third quarter with the Rollbase product available immediately.