What are the drivers fuelling uptake of AIM software in the local market?

Peter Chapman
Senior solution architect, Extend Technologies

Extend Technologies’ customers face three significant drivers as they design their application infrastructure.

Vendor consolidation is the first. Reducing the number of vendors and technologies saves time and money. It also narrows down the architectural options to a manageable number.

Most of our customers are already committed to SAP and Microsoft, whose combined infrastructure supports ERP, CRM, process orchestration, offline users, workflow, master data management, service integration, plant integration, mobility, portals, Internet, and business intelligence.

It makes sense to exhaust their combined offerings before looking further afield.

Collaboration is the second driver. IT architects have embraced Service-Oriented Architecture and every vendor is ticking the SOA box. In practice this means easier (if slower-performing) integration between different applications, users and equipment.

As a gold partner with both SAP and Microsoft, Extend Technologies specialises in high-performance solutions that combine SAP’s data, security and business logic with Microsoft’s familiar, customisable user interface. Our customers are adopting these hybrid solutions with enthusiasm previously reserved for social networking sites.

Today’s younger employees need an engaging user experience. “One size fits all” is no longer the case. Modern design tools make it cheap and easy to tailor the interface. The application infrastructure must encourage this freedom without compromising the integrity of back-end processes and data.

From our perspective we will need to deliver to user expectations, deliver a return on the IT investment by providing an integrated and flexible technology framework for business execution.