SAP, IBM to release joint Alloy software

INFORMATION and communications giants, IBM and SAP, which have significant market on the continent, will in March release their first joint software product known as Alloy.

The software combines IBM Lotus Notes software with SAP Business Suite and is a new style of software application that presents information and data from SAP applications in the context of the IBM Lotus Notes collaboration software desktop.

The companies believe that this will make it easier for professionals to do their work and enhance the investment that companies have made in their SAP applications.

“We expect the new Alloy software from IBM and SAP to help us drive down IT management costs and boost productivity by allowing employees easy access to SAP reports, procurement data and product lifecycle management tools directly from their Lotus Notes e-mail,” said Tom Greene of Colgate-Palmolive.

His remarks were echoed by Claus Qvistgaard, a senior director at Arla Foods Amba, Global IT.

“Alloy will enable our senior management immediate access to critical information in our SAP system directly from Lotus Notes. This will enable them to improve the quality and timeliness of their decisions, leading to superior business outcomes for Arla Foods,” he said.

Alloy implementations will take advantage of the collaborative and offline capabilities inherent in Lotus Notes and Domino products. The initial release will be sold by both companies.

SAP Business Suite is a comprehensive family of adaptive business applications, providing best-in-class functionality built for complete integration, industry-specific capability, unlimited scalability and easy collaboration over the Internet.

For more than 35 years, IBM and SAP have collaborated to bring joint customers offerings to improve business efficiency at more than 13 000 client sites for their millions of users–ITNewsAfrica.