SAP introduces the non-upgrade

Determining the right time to upgrade an ERP system is a never-ending conundrum for IT managers. No one wants to take on such a large financial and logistical burden without being sure it will produce real business value. At the same time, delaying an upgrade for too long could put a company at a competitive disadvantage if industry peers become early adopters of new technology or functionality in a vendor's latest release.

Last fall, SAP said it had freed its customers from having to wrestle with the upgrade decision—at least for awhile—by creating a new road map for the mySAP ERP 2005 suite.

Of course, anyone not already on this version of mySAP will have to make that upgrade. But once that's done, SAP says, you won't have to think about upgrades again until at least 2010, which is the earliest SAP plans to deliver a new version of mySAP, or whatever its ERP system will be called then.

Three years is at least twice as long as the typical ERP upgrade cycle. (And anyone who adopted the latest version of mySAP when it debuted in 2005 is looking at five years between upgrades.)

So what are users supposed to do if business conditions present a need for new functionality before then?

No problem, SAP says. The mySAP ERP 2005 road map calls for the release of multiple "enhancement packages" that users can choose to adopt if they have a need for the functionality they contain, or ignore if they don't.

The line from SAP is that the service-oriented architecture underpinning mySAP 2005 makes it possible to issue these packets of functionality, which the vendor describes as extensions to the core ERP suite. The first enhancement package, released this past December, offers manufacturers a better means of monitoring global production processes by integrating manufacturing execution and quality systems with ERP.

This type of integration is now easy, SAP contends, because the core pieces of mySAP have all been exposed as services that can be connected with other applications in loosely coupled fashion rather than with hard-coded interfaces.

"Historically, SAP customers had to wait for the next release of ERP to grow functionality," says Rod Masney, president of the Americas SAP Users Group. "Having the ability to leverage services means customers can rapidly assemble new business processes to address today's business problems in strategic fashion."

Masney says the user group has not taken a formal position on whether its members should adopt the new services-oriented platform. He notes that the company where he serves as global director of IT infrastructure has not yet moved to mySAP ERP 2005, primarily because it has not been able to schedule a global rollout.

While stopping short of a formal endorsement, the user group is offering multiple opportunities—though symposiums, Webcasts, and other venues—for its members to understand the underlying features of mySAP 2005.

And it appears the members like what they are hearing. Masney says 75 percent of those attending the most recent symposium said they plan to adopt mySAP 2005 this year.

"Every company's situation is different," Masney says. "When to upgrade is an individual decision, but we believe the ability to address current business problems without having to change the core pieces of the system presents a compelling case for adopting mySAP 2005."