It was announced this week…
http://www.mbtmag.com/article/CA6570888.html?nid=3436&rid=1258896918
SAP to buy Visiprise. Those of us in the business knew it was coming at some point, and it happened. What will be really interesting is to see what this does to the relationships SAP has with other key players in the industry like Camstar, Apriso, Wonderware, Rockwell, etc. All of these companies have some type of technical or strategic relationship with SAP so they can all say they can “connect to SAP with their MES solutions.”
So now what? It was hard to argue with a customer that says something like “I spent $XXM on SAP to run my business and if I can leverage that investment to help me run my operations better, that is what I am going to do.” In the mid to long term, it is going to be very hard to convince a company to use a different MES solution other than Visiprise if they are an SAP user.
I have often wondered who is going to “win” in the MES space - ERP or the Automation vendors. This move would appear to be a swing in the direction of ERP winning the battle for MES. I have been silent on posts for a while, but this will provide some good thoughts in the upcoming weeks.
Even though SAP has acquired Visiprise, surely MES providers such as Camstar & Apriso will continue to be able to provide services and solutions to their customers that have SAP installed as their ERP system, won’t they? In order for SAP to initiate some sort of lock out in which all of their MES customers were forced to use Visiprise wouldn’t there have to be a large and significant change to the structure of their system? Despite the acquisition of Visiprise by SAP, does the Visiprise MES product offer any significant advantages over their main competitors?