HP Launches CloudSystems Solutions In Asia

US computer technology company HP has launched its Converged Cloud solutions programme in the Asia Pacific and Japan region. The company hopes the addition will simplify and encourage the use of cloud technology in the area, CRN reports. Customers can select from 15 HP CloudSystem solutions, according to operating system and requirements for extra hardware and licences.

How Contractors, Consultants & Architects manage their work with CRM:

Share Information

Make the most of all your clients, contacts, projects and leads with one single database - accessible both in and out of the office.

Improve Business Development Effectiveness

Profile clients and key industry sectors for targeted marketing and corporate hospitality. Measure the value of all your KPI project leads.

Reduce Bid Costs

 Co-ordinate your activities for pre-quals and RFPs, understand which projects are won or lost and access real time information on the bid pipeline.

Deliver Superior & Consistent Service Levels

Create, assign and manage RFIs and client service issues from initial contact through to resolution.

Manage Client & Project Documentation

Quickly search for and locate relevant client and project documentation.

Make Informed Decisions

Report on bids by client, region, industry sector and discipline and identify trends and opportunities.

Use Easily

Manage all your contacts and projects from within Microsoft Outlook – the tool you already use every day.

Work from Anywhere

Access the same information with Microsoft Outlook on your laptop or via a web browser. Access your diary, key contacts and activities via a wireless handheld device.

CANIAS ERP Implementation in Petro Middle East, ABU DHABI:

Petro Middle East (PME), a 100% U.A.E. National Company, engages in providing services and supply of engineering products for the Oil & Gas, Petrochemical industries and Utilities sector since 1995. PME represents a vast array of renowned international manufacturers specialized in engineering products and services. The management's vision and dynamism has enabled PME to surge ahead as one among the recognized and approved supplier with all major local and government companies in the UAE for the Oil & Gas, Petrochemical & Utilities sector.

While embarking on its ERP mission, PME had the primary objective of deploying an efficient system to streamline the day to day operations of its "Inside Sales Department" which formed the nucleus of PME's operations. Inside sales department is primarily tasked with handling daily enquiries, understanding the correct specifications, sourcing the prices and ensuring that tenders are submitted within the stipulated timeline. Further, it undertakes the expedition and logistics aspects of the customer order thereby providing the impetus for efficient and prompt deliverance. Since most of the engineering products were specification driven, majority of their customer requirements needed to be sourced back to back from the principle which makes the process lengthy and cumbersome to manage. It also required being flexible in managing the nuisances associated with an industry majorly supplying non stocking and feature specific materials as demanded by the customer.

The main challenge for the implementation of an ERP system was to come up with standard coding mechanics for its vast range of engineering products to ensure that they have a standard nomenclature thereby ensuring tracking, preventing duplication and ensuring availability of historical data. "Coming up with definite processes to manage the enquiries and criteria to distinguish the products enquired was a challenge by its own. We work against deadlines for both tender submission and delivery and required efficient mechanics to manage the tender time lines, revisions, mode of submission etc. Though I was skeptic initially, I engaged with Canias ERP consultants vehemently and all inside sales activities from enquiry receipt, bid evaluation, tendering, order, delivery and invoicing are streamlined in the system" comments Mr. Mohamad Basheer, Inside Sales & Customer Services Manager of Petro Middle East. 

Management was interested to ascertain the revenue generation against different business streams including trading, service, project and direct forwarding. Further, principals constitute the major element of its business operations and there required information pertaining to business performance by principal and the financial performance to the minuscule level of each order. Mr. Jamal Zaher, Managing Partner of Petro Middle East comments that, "Though I am yet to engage in ERP aided management decision making, I am sure it had added required vitality in our organization and look forward to harness its power very soon".

Canias ERP is been accessed from other locations by PME group companies. The fact that Canias is fully web enabled and its flexibility in undertaking customizations has come in handy for Mr. Karim Ghneim, ERP Administrator & IT Manager of Petro Middle East. "We have enhanced the system utility by adding in facilities for conducting bid evaluations, performance bond, bid bond, test certificates etc in the system. The availability of integrated document management is adding further dimension to the whole system utility by facilitating visibility within the organization for all commercial, contractual and HR related documents without any chaos". 

What will ERP fix in my business?

There are five major reasons why companies undertake ERP.

1. Integrate financial information—As the CEO tries to understand the company’s overall performance, he may find many different versions of the truth. Finance has its own set of revenue numbers, sales has another version, and the different business units may each have their own version of how much they contributed to revenues. ERP creates a single version of the truth that cannot be questioned because everyone is using the same system.
2. Integrate customer order information—ERP systems can become the place where the customer order lives from the time a customer service representative receives it until the loading dock ships the merchandise and finance sends an invoice. By having this information in one software system, rather than scattered among many different systems that can’t communicate with one another, companies can keep track of orders more easily, and coordinate manufacturing, inventory and shipping among many different locations at the same time.
3. Standardize and speed up manufacturing processes—Manufacturing companies—especially those with an appetite for mergers and acquisitions—often find that multiple business units across the company make the same widget using different methods and computer systems. ERP systems come with standard methods for automating some of the steps of a manufacturing process. Standardizing those processes and using a single, integrated computer system can save time, increase productivity and reduce head count.
4. Reduce inventory—ERP helps the manufacturing process flow more smoothly, and it improves visibility of the order fulfillment process inside the company. That can lead to reduced inventories of the stuff used to make products (work-in-progress inventory), and it can help users better plan deliveries to customers, reducing the finished good inventory at the warehouses and shipping docks. To really improve the flow of your supply chain, you need supply chain software, but ERP helps too.
5. Standardize HR information—Especially in companies with multiple business units, HR may not have a unified, simple method for tracking employees’ time and communicating with them about benefits and services. ERP can fix that.

Competitive Market Position of Oracle Databases:

Competition

In the market for relational databases, Oracle Database competes against commercial products such as IBM's DB2 UDB and Microsoft SQL Server. Oracle and IBM tend to battle for the mid-range database market on UNIX and Linux platforms, while Microsoft dominates the mid-range database market on Microsoft Windows platforms. However, since they share many of the same customers, Oracle and IBM tend to support each other's products in many middleware and application categories (for example: WebSphere, PeopleSoft, and Siebel Systems CRM), and IBM's hardware divisions work closely with Oracle on performance-optimizing server-technologies (for example, Linux on zSeries). The two companies have a relationship perhaps best described as "coopetition". Niche commercial competitors include Teradata (in data warehousing and business intelligence), Software AG's ADABAS, Sybase, and IBM's Informix, among many others.

In 2007, competition with SAP AG occasioned litigation from Oracle Corporation.^[87]

Increasingly, the Oracle database products compete against such open-source software relational database systems as PostgreSQL, Firebird, and MySQL. Oracle acquired Innobase, supplier of the InnoDB codebase to MySQL, in part to compete better against open source alternatives, and acquired Sun Microsystems, owner of MySQL, in 2010. Database products licensed as open source are, by the legal terms of the Open Source Definition, free to distribute and free of royalty or other licensing fees.

Pricing

Oracle Corporation offers term licensing for all Oracle products. It bases the list price for a term-license on a specific percentage of the perpetual license price. Prospective purchasers can obtain licenses based either on the number of processors in their target server machines or on the number of potential seats ("named users").

Enterprise Edition

As of July 2010, the database that costs the most per machine-processor among Oracle database editions, at $47,500 per processor. The term "per processor" for Enterprise Edition is defined with respect to physical cores and a processor core multiplier (common processors = 0.5*cores). E.g. An 8-processor, 32-core server using Intel Xeon 56XX CPUs would require 16 processor licenses.

Standard Edition

Cheaper: it can run on up to four processors but has fewer features than Enterprise Edition—it lacks proper parallelization, etc.; but remains quite suitable for running medium-sized applications. There are not additional costs for Oracle RAC on the latest Oracle 11g R2 standard edition release.

Standard ONE

Sells even more cheaply, but remains limited to two CPUs. Standard Edition ONE sells on a per-seat basis with a five-user minimum. Oracle Corporation usually sells the licenses with an extra 22% cost for support and upgrades (access to MetaLink—Oracle Corporation's support site) which customers need to renew annually.

Oracle Express Edition (Oracle XE)

An addition to the Oracle database product family (beta version released in 2005, production version released in February 2006), offers a free version of the Oracle RDBMS, but one limited to 11 GB of user data and to 1 GB of memory used by the database (SGA+PGA) XE will use no more than one CPU and lacks an internal JVM. XE runs only on Windows and on Linux, not on AIX, Solaris, HP-UX and the other operating systems available for other editions. Support is via a free Oracle Discussion Forum only.

Note: These Prices are vary country to country e.g. if you purchase Oracle License in United Arab Emirates (Dubai) than discount margin is different if you are purchasing same product in Pakistan than discount margin will be different.