Sand Reasserts RapidMarts Functionality

An independent survey of SAP users carried out by the UK subsidiary of Sand Technology Inc reveals that 70 percent of the respondents are encountering significant limitations with SAP data warehouses and require extensive services from either in-house or contracted programmers to retrieve meaningful reporting from SAP. These programming resources must be proficient in ABAP, a proprietary computer language required to work with SAP data, and their services are typically extremely costly, respondents noted.

The most common problem experienced by users is that they believe it takes too long for reports to be developed, and these reports are not easily modified. Forty-four percent of reporting projects require 12 months or more to complete.

A further report, conducted by The Gartner Group, the noted computer industry analysis firm, titled "SAP's Business Warehouse: Go/ No?," suggests that SAP's Business Warehouse "is not there yet", in delivering needed reporting capabilities for SAP users. The report concludes that customers should consider SAP's Business Warehouse along with other alternatives in a strategy to develop a successful data warehouse.

Sand Technology, which together with Acta Technology Inc developed its Nucleus SAP reporting solution (RapidMarts) in December 1999, believes that the two studies will further the penetration of its set of data warehousing tools into this important market sector. Sand Technology's fixed price Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) offering using SAP R/3 enables highly flexible reporting at lower costs than other alternatives and can be implemented in very short timeframes.

"We are not surprised to hear that a number of users have been suffering with the SAP-provided approach because, aside from being extremely costly, it can result in poor and inflexible reporting," comments Duncan Painter, European general manager of Sand Technology, on the survey findings.

Painter continues: "Our Nucleus RapidMarts approach is faster and more cost effective than any of its rivals and can be integrated with multiple environments very rapidly. In addition, the fact that we are able to offer fixed rate solutions means that our package is unrivalled in terms of being able to produce a timely reporting solution."

Sand, in conjunction with Acta Technology's ActaWorks extraction program for SAP R/3, is able to implement fixed-priced reporting systems for a range of SAP R/3 modules, including, sales analysis, costs analysis, human resources, accounts analysis and inventory management. "ActaWorks for SAP R/3 is completely compatible with Sand's Nucleus Exploration Suite, the award winning set of data warehousing tools, which are revolutionizing data warehousing," noted Painter. To ensure timely delivery of the pre-defined Nucleus RapidMart solutions, Sand has refined a methodology that enables complete implementation of any of these systems within a six-week period.

About Sand Technology

Sand Technology Inc provides high performance, scalable software solutions for data mining, data marts, data warehouses and online analytical processing (OLAP). Sand's Nucleus product suite brings patented technology to the business user allowing for more timely and accurate decision processing within the disconnected client, desktop, workgroup, departmental and enterprise computing environments. Supporting such industries as retail, finance, healthcare, transportation, telecommunication, manufacturing, government and insurance, Nucleus is used for corporate initiatives such as customer relationship management, risk analysis and management, product trend and profitability analysis, fraud detection, emerging markets, competitive analysis and quality control. Sand has commercial relationships with IBM, Oracle, Compaq Computer Corporation, Microsoft, SAIC, GE, Brio Technology, Information Builders Inc, and Wyle Systems. Sand Technology can be reached on the World Wide Web at www.sandtechnology.com.

About Acta Technology

Acta Technology provides the solutions that address the challenges of building ERP data warehouses. ActaWorks for SAP extracts data from SAP and non-SAP sources, transforms and cleanses the data and loads it into the data warehouse or data mart. ActaWorks has been certified by SAP to extend the power of SAP's Business Warehouse (BW) offering by loading both additional SAP R/3 and non-SAP data into BW, without requiring customized and proprietary ABAP programs. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.acta.com.

Contact vice president Finance and Administration of Sand Technology Inc, 514-939-3477, www.sandtechnology.com.