SAP AG is expected to turn on all of its Windows NT marketing guns at the forthcoming SAP TechEd 98 technical conference in Los Angeles, hoping to scoop up potential ERP users more disposed to running application and databases on NT rather than Unix. SAP watchers maintain that although some 40% of the company’s new business is done on NT application servers, the vast majority of those are still running Unix on a separate machine to host the database component of the solution. Moreover, where NT is used as the database platform, they’re invariably running Oracle Corp, not SQL Server. Oracle represents 70% of SAP’s installed base. Along with examining the widely-previewed release 4.5 of its R/3 ERP, SAP is also expected to emphasize the so-called business intelligence warehouse, its supply management efforts and announce a few additional vertical market initiatives.
