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Browsing Posts tagged SAP

Globes reported today that SAP’s recent announcement that it was cutting 6% of its global workforce (3,000 jobs) would likely include some layoffs to its Israel division.  

Despite its reaching €3.5 billion revenue for the fourth quarter in 2008, SAP’s software sales were down 7%. According to Globes,

SAP co-CEO Leo Apotheker said, “The cost containment measures will allow us to adapt to the tough market conditions and ensure the long term competitiveness of the company. We expect 2009 to be a year of limited visibility, making it increasingly difficult to project sales in this environment.”

Currently based in Ra’anana, SAP has had a presence in Israel since 1998 and has over 900 employees. According to the Israel R&D site, Matimop, the Israel division of SAP focuses on the following four areas: SAP Netweaver (BPM), SAP Business One (Small business solutions), supply chain execution, SAP Master Data Management (MDM).

The article also reports that despite looming layoffs, the company is hiring sales people. Here is a video example of Business One in action. 


SAP Business One

SNI-2.JPGDuring the week of October 5, 2008, Israel’s cleantech industry continued to make progress and headlines. The biggest cleantech story being that the Cleantech Group has partnered with the California Israel Chamber of Commerce. In telecommunications, JaJah which hasn’t made any significant headlines in the past few months, “re-emerged,” while in Trusteer made another announcement that caught attention. Of course, there was plenty of IT and financial crisis-related headlines making this week’s 14 Israel-related technology headlines as well. For the full list, scroll below.

Cleantech
1. Cleantech Group Partners With California Israel Chamber of Commerce

2. An electrifying solution for wastewater treatment

Information Technology
3. Zoran’s IPS(TM) Interpreter for XPS Earns Logo Certifications From Microsoft

4. JAJAH Gives Voice to Global Innovators

5. CopperGate Communications Named Most Promising Start-up in Israel

6. Beijing Website Aims at High Performance w/ Crescendo

Information Security
7. IBI: SAP profit warning danger to Israeli firms

8. PineApp Ltd. Positioned in Niche Player Quadrant for E-Mail Security Boundaries Magic Quadrant

9. Trusteer Receives “Best of the Web” Award from Online Banking Report

Miscellaneous
10. Israel’s booming hi-tech industry

11. Mobileye Answers Call for U.S. Driver Safety Solutions

12. ‘Universities can’t open academic year’

13. How many Israelis will lose their jobs due to financial crisis?

14. The Five Plagues of Israel: 5 reasons for the exceptionally low Q2 results

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel.  Any questions or inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.

*About the Weekly Headlines image: The Star of David in the image was found on Flickr and is used under the Creative Commons license. It was originally uploaded by Flickr member, zeevveez. The overall Weekly Headlines image was designed by Lisa Damast.

During the week of July 13, 2008, SAP announced its plans to open an R&D center in Israel, following in the footsteps of corporations such as Microsoft, IBM and Intel. Microsoft’s purchase of data management company, Zoomix was officially announced and Magic Software signed a deal with Blat-Lapidot, a leading Salesforce.com Partner. Shopflick raised $7 million in funding while it was announced that Israeli startups, combined, raised over  $1 billion in the first half of 2008 (the highest since 2001). What happened in cleantech this past week? Not much in relation to Israeli companies. There were however other headlines. For those and the previous stories, check below for the full list of the 17 Israel-related technology headlines from the week of July 17, 2008.

M&A and Partnerships
Magic Software Signs up Blat-Lapidot – a Leading Salesforce.com Partner

Mobile location tech co Destinator bought by Intinsync

Nextlink to develop technology with Israeli partner through $1M grant

Alvarion, Ceragon and ECI in Danish WiMAX project

Microsoft Bolsters Data Management With Zoomix Purchase

Investments
Israeli start-ups raise over $1 billion

Israel to invest NIS 400m in alternative energy

Leon Recanati invests in Whitewater

Shopflick Closes $7 Million in Funding Led by Panorama Capital and Venrock

More investment for Israeli start-ups

Information Technology
SAP to open R&D center in Israel

Bill Gates, Microsoft Endorse PNMSoft Business Process Management BPM Software

Slovak Telekom Expands its Relationship with Amdocs

Tech Watch: Major US utility selects NICE Systems

Miscellaneous
The Economic Impact of Global Warming is Beginning to Show: IDE Starts Marketing Snowmakers for the Global Ski Industry

Tech budget cut, but engineers lacking

Playtech, Paramount Pictures Deal Announced


About the author:
Lisa Damast is the Membership
Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or
inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be
directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.

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Earlier today Aternity Inc., announced its first set of packaged Frontline Performance Intelligence (FPI)
solutions
tailored for specific enterprise applications
and the launch of its worldwide Partner Program. Last week, I had the opportunity to interview Aternity CEO, Trevor Matz, by phone to discuss the two-fold announcement a little more in depth. The following is the interview.

LD: Can you give a brief background of the company?
TM: Aternity is an end user experience management solutions provider based in the U.S. with an R&D center in Israel. Our Frontline Performance Intelligence Platform is transforming the typical reactive enterprise into one that is proactive. The platform uniquely monitors the end-user experience in real time by analyzing, aggregating and correlating desktop performance, application performance and user productivity to help determine and resolve in less time the root cause of any problems. Using the FPI Platform, companies can become proactive in capacity planning, application licensing optimization, and desktop virtualization and orchestration.

What is the new Partner Program?
The Partner Program addresses two problems through two types of partners. The first type, application partners, are companies that make and sell their own applications who can integrate Aternity’s FPI Platform into their products to increase end user productivity. The ROI from such integration is usually 4 times the cost of loss in the first year. The second type is consulting partners, such as IBM, EDS and boutique System Integrators. They will be certified to make sure that they know the methodology and technology of our product. Both types of partners will be able to bring this to a broader market.

What are some of the features and benefits included in the packaged Frontline Performance Intelligence (FPI)
solutions
?

FPI packaged solutions will be offered around leading enterprise applications, such as SAP, Siebel and Microsoft Office/Exchange. It can build support in the field and through our past work, it has a library of packaged solutions for specific applications. These are directed in rapid time to benefit more rapid ROI.

Is there anything else being offered with the first set of packaged FPI solutions?
We are also offering a unique twist connected to this and our Partner Program. Any organization can suggest that we build a mission critical application for its product. If the organization qualifies, we will then work with it to build the application based on its products for free in 2-3 days on site.

Which markets are most of your customers in?
Our customers are primarily in the healthcare and financial markets. After that there is a split between the high-tech and manufacturing markets, but our customer base isn’t really limited by industry as our products solve the same set of problems that everyone has – lack of visibility and understanding.

What gives Aternity its edge over its competition?
Our integrated analytics correlation engine and virtualization support makes our solutions unique. These programs truly deliver immediate time to value and show our proof of concept in one day by showing the value-decrease effort and movement.

How much does the FPI Platform cost?
Pricing depends on the number of end points in an organization, but it generally starts at $100,000 and up.

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership
Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or
inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be
directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.

News:
Last month, enterprise software company, Magic Software Enterprises reported that it earned record revenues for the third quarter of 2007. On the same day, it also announced that Guy Bernstein would replace David Assia as Chairman of the Board.

Background:
According to a company description, Magic Software provides

“enterprise application development, deployment and integration technology. Magic Software’s platform-independent methodology lets companies achieve agility by quickly assembling composite applications, allowing programmers to create services and architects and business analysts to orchestrate and reuse these services to enable business processes. Through partnerships with industry leaders such as IBM and SAP and more than 2500 ISVs worldwide, Magic Software technology is used by more than 1.5 million customers around the globe.”

Headquartered in Israel, Magic Software was founded by David Assia and others in 1986 and was the first company to be co-listed on both the NASDAQ and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). It is a subsidiary of the Formula Systems and Emblaze Group of companies.

Analysis:
The third quarter is the second consecutive quarter in which Magic Software has had record earnings. Back in August, Timothy Prickett Morgan of ITJungle explained that Magic Software’s high second quarter earnings was the result of “restructuring and revamped product line.”

Since March, Magic has restructured its leadership with changes in its President/CEO, CFO and two new board members. As Assia was also the co-founder and former CEO of Magic Software, last month’s announcement that Chairman David Assia will be replaced by Guy Bernstein marked a strong changing of the guard and the direction of the company away from its management roots.

Accompanying such changes at the top, have been several announcements of high-stake deals and industry recognition. In May, Magic Software achieved IBM business partner specialty designation and a Magic Software subsidiary signed an initial $1.3 million agreement with KLM Cargo in June. In July, it signed its 200th SAP Business One partner and in October made a generous donation of its integration software to Penn State University.

Of course, in addition to Morgan’s reasons for Magic Software’s increased revenue, the information technology industry’s continued mass migration to implement service-oriented architecture (SOA) in recent years has certainly helped increase the demand and sales potentials for Magic Software’s products.

According to the website, Magic Software’s iBOLT Business Integration Suite,

“enables customers to easily design, develop and deploy automated business processes, including Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM).”

Its eDeveloper,

“is a composite applications toolset, delivering an extremely productive, state-of-the-art technology for developing and deploying composite Web and Client/Server applications across and beyond the enterprise.”

Both products shorten the process times and offer to help increase profitability. While providing the means for other companies to increase profitability, Magic Software’s record earnings have helped the company resurface into the black earlier this year and continue its climb. What Magic Software offers and does next in 2008, should be watched closely.

Additional Resources:
The role of composite applications in an SOA
ebizQ.net Webinar: A Guide to Building Composite Applications
Oracle Extends Application Integration Architecture

Israel as the first gasoline-free economy sounds pretty far off to anyone who has walked down a major street in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem lately and was showered with soot from an old public transit bus passing by, but it is in the works. Former Israeli whizkid and SAP Chief of Products, Shai Agassi, who left the company in March with plans “to help convert his native Israel and its neighbor Jordan into gasoline-free economies with nationwide electronic transportation systems,” has raised $200 million for his stealth-mode company, Project Better Place to make electric cars and to use existing battery technologies, which are enough to get cars to go about 100 miles before recharging.

According to the news release, the company has received funding from Israel Corp., an Israel-based oil, trade and shipping conglomerate (which invested $100 million), and VantagePoint Venture Partners among others.

This announcement is impressive considering 9 months ago he was still working hard at SAP and talking about plans for SAP to go green. Hear his thoughts on the environment and SAP below in a video interview of him from the World Economic Forum at Davos this past January.