Maximizing Performance of ERP Systems…SAS Institute, Luminate Software Extend Reach of IT Service Vision Software for SAP AG's R/3

Business Wire, Sept 14, 1999

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 14, 1999--

SAS Institute Inc., the market leader in integrated data warehousing and decision support, today announced a partnership with Luminate(TM) Software Corporation, a leading provider of application-management software for planning, implementing, and operating SAP AG's R/3 system.

Through the partnership, SAS Institute's systems-management solution, IT Service Vision(TM) software, will read, process and report on performance data collected in SAP AG's R/3 environment by certain products in the Luminate for SAP R/3 product family, including Luminate Service Level Analyzer for SAP R/3.

IT Service Vision software will enable network administrators, business managers, and capacity planners to forecast and analyze Luminate application-management data from R/3 in order to improve the performance of their R/3 systems, identifying potential problems in advance, taking corrective steps if necessary, and providing information to decision-makers through a comprehensive and customizable report library.

In addition, SAS Institute's IT Charge Manager(TM) software will be able to perform accounting and chargeback for the R/3 environment based on this data, making day-to-day chargeback administration easier and more understandable.

The announcement came at NetWorld Interop 99, taking place at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta through Sept. 17. SAS Institute is showcasing IT Service Vision software at the show in the SAS Institute booth, No. 2937.

ERP system performance

For companies that have invested heavily in automating critical business applications (logistics, inventory, and production, for example) through ERP systems like SAP AG's R/3, the key is achieving ROI from this investment.

Data-warehousing and decision-support solutions - like those from SAS Institute - can help companies achieve competitive advantage by surfacing and exploiting the data from these ERP systems and turning ERP data into business information and ultimately, better business decisions. Maximizing the performance of these ERP systems is also crucial - and this is where IT Service Vision software and software from Luminate can make a difference.

"We are excited to be partnering with Luminate," said Christy Garrison, program manager for IT Service Vision software at SAS Institute. "Luminate's application management expertise and knowledge of SAP AG's R/3 will be of great benefit to IT Service Vision customers. Luminate software gathers all the data from R/3 data tables necessary to do end-to-end calculations, and with this partnership, R/3 customers will now be able to correlate the performance of their applications with all infrastructure components. This partnership will also make it easy to perform accounting and chargeback in any R/3 environment."

"By providing an open environment, we enable our customers to take advantage of a powerful repository of SAP R/3 performance data that they can use to build their own applications," said Bruce Fram, president and CEO of Luminate Software. "We are pleased to join the long-term forecasting, chargeback, and detailed reporting capabilities of SAS Institute's IT Service Vision software with Luminate's powerful R/3 application-management software to bring real value and competitive advantage to our customers."

About IT Service Vision

IT Service Vision software gives IT professionals the ability to understand corporate-wide system performance by providing reporting and analysis of networks, servers, the Web, standard applications such as SAP AG's R/3, and telecommunication systems, and the interactions among them. More than 1,000 customers have chosen IT Service Vision software to help them manage and integrate their systems. For more on IT Service vision, see http://www.sas.com/software/it_vision/.> Luminate Software products are among the literally thousands of data sources from which IT Service Vision can access and analyze data. These data sources cover the entire spectrum of the IT enterprise including mainframes, UNIX, Windows NT, web log, and phone switches, just to name a few. Using its generic collector facility and a Performance Data Warehouse, IT Service Vision allows virtually any IT services data to be stored and summarized for historical trending and capacity planning.

About Luminate Software Corporation

Luminate Software provides the most powerful application management software for planning, implementing and operating SAP R/3. Luminate delivers the only end-to-end solutions for performance analysis, problem identification, capacity planning, and service level management from the end-user perspective. Luminate's software extends your current IT resources, improves service to users and reduces costs. Founded in 1995, Luminate Software is privately held and venture-funded by Mayfield Fund, Institutional Venture Partners and Mitsubishi. For more information, visit http://www.luminate.com.

About SAS Institute

SAS Institute, the world's largest privately held software company, is the leader in decision support and data warehousing, providing integrated enterprise information-delivery solutions. Founded in 1976, the Institute markets packaged business solutions for vertical industry and departmental applications, as well as an integrated suite of software tools and consulting services. These allow companies to transform the wide variety of data within their organizations into information that business users and researchers need to make better decisions. SAS(R) software and services are used at more than 33,000 business, government, and university sites in 115 countries. SAS Institute achieved 1998 revenue of $871 million.