SDCExec.com |

Vienna, Austria — May 25, 2007 — Information technology giant HP has introduced a solution designed to allow manufacturers and distribution companies to improve visibility into and control over software and business service interactions across their supply chains and within IT environments.

The HP Manufacturing and Distribution Industries Business Services Management (MDI BSM) solution, which has achieved "SAP xApps certified — Powered by SAP NetWeaver" status, can be implemented without changing existing IT systems, according to the company. The result is manufacturers can shorten their time to market for new products and services, save money and, ultimately, deliver better business outcomes.

The offering was announced earlier this month at SAPPHIRE '07 Vienna, SAP's international customer conference.

According to Peter Gibbels, Global Solutions lead for ERP/SAP Services at HP, the offering is the outcome of a longer development that began three years ago when HP identified customer pain points as they implemented SAP solutions. The HP MDI BSM solution addresses common business issues by providing the means for manufacturing and distribution companies to allow IT managers to establish business process service-level agreements with their line-of-business counterparts to more effectively align IT with business priorities.

Users can also shift the focus from reacting to infrastructure problems to understanding the impact of IT changes and breakdowns, and use business metrics to drive more intelligent IT decision making. This includes addressing issues before they have an impact on the business and speeding reaction time to shifting market opportunities or threats.

MDI BSM also allows users to shorten the time to market for new products and services and speed the adoption of enterprise service-oriented architecture (eSOA) to achieve the benefits of increased flexibility for business processes and reduced development, integration and maintenance costs.

"Successful business service management depends on the ability to track and visualize key business processes," said Mike Tay, director, IT Strategy and Consulting, Adobe. "Today, Adobe is using HP Business Availability Center and HP Operations Center to monitor a wide range of SAP applications for front- and back-end business operations providing greater visibility that improves user, customer and business partner satisfaction."