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$! They are the largest ERP solution provider with more than 75.000 customers
and 12 million users and holding around 30 oI market share. The Ilagship Solution,
R/3 is unmatched Ior its sophistication and robustness. R/3 soItware gives an option
oI around 1000 pre-conIigured business processes. This solution is available in all
major currencies and languages and can be hosted on several Operating Systems and
Databases. As mid market option, SAP has brought out, Business All in One, a
solution with industry tailored conIigurations. SAP oIIering Ior smaller organization
is SAP Business One. SAP oIIers a hosted solution, namely SAP Business by Design,
Ior organizations lacking IT resources.
Oracle Oracle is next to SAP in ERP market breadth, depth and share. It oIIers a
comprehensive, multilingual and multi currency solution, mostly through its channel
partners.. It is the Iirst to implement internet computing model Ior developing and
deploying its product. Oracle also took over various ERP solution providers during
2000 such as People SoIt, JD Edwards, Retek (retail industry solution), and Siebel
(customer relationship management soItware). It has taken up project Fusion (based
on Service Oriented Architecture) to integrate various products, outcome oI which is
keenly awaited.
Infor InIor is oI recent origin and expanded through a number oI acquisitions. Its
acquisition oI SSA global during 2006 made it a Iorerunner as ERP solution provider.
SSA global had two strong product lines, BPCS and BaaN. SSA also made a number
oI other acquisitions, such as MAPICS, Lily SoItware Associate and GEAC. SSA is
Iocused on building, buying and integrating best oI breed solutions.
crosoft Dynamcs MicrosoIt, which did not have an ERP portIolio, started by
acquiring a host oI ERP products like Navision, Solomon, Great Plain and Axapta.
Excepting Axapta, which is strong in manuIacturing and suitable Ior mid market,
other products are meant Ior smaller organizations. MicrosoIt is much dependent on
channel partners, not only Ior sales and consulting but also Ior add on development.
Their solutions are closely integrated with their oIIice suit.







OL! Vs OLT!


OLT! $ystem
Onlne Transacton !rocessng
(Operatonal $ystem)
OL! $ystem
Onlne nalytcal !rocessng
(Data Warehouse)
Source oI data
Operational data; OLTPs are the
original source oI the data.
Consolidation data; OLAP data comes
Irom the various OLTP Databases
Purpose oI
data
To control and run Iundamental
business tasks
To help with planning, problem solving,
and decision support
What the data
Reveals a snapshot oI ongoing
business processes
Multi-dimensional views oI various
kinds oI business activities
Inserts and
Updates
Short and Iast inserts and updates
initiated by end users
Periodic long-running batch jobs reIresh
the data
Queries
Relatively standardized and simple
queries Returning relatively Iew
records
OIten complex queries involving
aggregations
Processing
Speed
Typically very Iast
Depends on the amount oI data
involved; batch data reIreshes and
complex queries may take many hours;
query speed can be improved by
creating indexes
Space
Requirements
Can be relatively small iI historical
data is archived
Larger due to the existence oI
aggregation structures and history data;
requires more indexes than OLTP
Database
Design
Highly normalized with many tables
Typically de-normalized with Iewer
tables; use oI star and/or snowIlake
schemas
Backup and
Recovery
Backup religiously; operational data
is critical to run the business, data
loss is likely to entail signiIicant
monetary loss and legal liability
Instead oI regular backups, some
environments may consider simply
reloading the OLTP data as a recovery
method