SAP will use its Sapphire user conference the week of May 15 to try to persuade customers to move from R/3 to MySAP ERP.
The company, based in Walldorf, Germany, seeks to entice customers with the recent development bonanza around its ESA (Enterprise Services Architecture) concept and underlying NetWeaver integration platform, including ecosystem initiatives like its Industry Value Networks.
SAP also will announce at the Orlando, Fla., show the long-awaited release of MySAP ERP 2005, which brings full NetWeaver capabilities.
Under the covers, however, pushing customers to MySAP, will be users' growing unease with rising maintenance costs and at least the perception that older R/3 products will be retired.
Customers now are caught in the middle. While mySAP 2004 is available—it has about 500 customers, according to Gartner—there are not many technical changes from R/3 to mySAP 2004. The real release that has any significance is mySAP 2005, which has too few users to be considered proven.
Click here to read about SAP's program to offer cut-rate support for Oracle ERP applications.
"Most people are not there yet—there's a whole continent of 4.6 C users, and at the end of the year their maintenance goes up," said Gartner analyst Yvonne Genovese. "Their problem: SAP has not GA'ed mySAP ERP 2005 early enough to [enable them to] make a decision."
The value of upgrading to MySAP 2005 stems from the more modern development concepts in play at SAP, particularly around the service enablement of MySAP ERP, and the process integration capabilities inherent with that.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: SAP Wants to Wean Customers from R/3
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