Software industry

Today we're announcing a significant new capability: integration of Actenum DSO with Microsoft Project. We've been able to exploit the open architecture of Actenum DSO to support a ‘round trip’ with Microsoft Project. That is, we can use Actenum DSO to open and read an input data file in Microsoft Project format, update and optimize it in any way required, and then publish it back to Microsoft Project.

Initially we targeted Microsoft Project 2010 with this capability, since it's the latest release, but it turns out that the integration capability also works for earlier versions of Microsoft Project, as well as Microsoft Excel. In principle, we can easily extend it to work with other applications, and we can import and export any sort of intermediate file type.

Why do I say this is a ‘significant capability’? Watch this short video and you'll see how much more productive you can be with Microsoft Project when you use it in conjunction with DSO.

“You think you've got a hold of it all
You haven't got a hold at all”
    Get the Balance Right, Depeche Mode (1982)

Suppose that you're working to make significant improvements in a part of your business, and have developed an organizational transformation strategy to do so. What is the correct balance of workflow, behaviour, and technology that is required for your project to be successful?

I’ve written about the Perfect Plant concept before, after digging into it at last year’s SAP Adaptive Manufacturing Summit.

According to the January 2008 edition of the Energy Insights Insights on Oil & Gas Newsletter, “[The] Pressure is on to increase recovery rates from known reserves given the expense of exploration.” And, “The Digital Oil field will see continued growth with enhanced production optimization.” In response, the authors state, “Oil and gas companies will look to tools for project and portfolio management, especially analytics that are able to support optimization.”

Recent financial news in the enterprise software sector is bubbling with stories about behemoths like IBM, Oracle, and SAP gobbling up Business Intelligence (BI) vendors like Cognos, Hyperion, and Business Objects, respectively.

The Digital Oilfield and the Intelligent Grid: two initiatives in different areas—Energy and Utilities—that focus on improved monitoring and management of the entire production value chain. In other industries too, there’s a buzz about putting more intelligence into operations. By making devices smarter, using sophisticated communication technologies, and employing software tools to gather, integrate, and present information to decision-makers in an appropriate way, the thinking goes, you’ll empower them to manage their operations more effectively.

Asset Performance Management (APM) is an evolving software category that supports business processes, workflows, data capture, analytics, and optimization to improve production availability, reliability and output.

When you examine SAP’s Perfect Plant initiative (there’s an overview in my earlier post), you’ll find that part of the journey to better alignment of production performance with enterprise objectives is concerned with focusing attention on three key areas: asset performance, operational scheduling and planning, and manufacturing execution.

Recently, I attended the SAP Adaptive Manufacturing Summit in San Francisco, CA. From my perspective, one of the more interesting topics discussed, and the subject of several presentations, was the “Perfect Plant” initiative, introduced by SAP earlier this year.