December 10, 1996 11:15 AM ET
SAP, Microsoft assess impact of new technologies on R/3
By Jim Kerstetter

LOS ANGELES--Developers working with software from SAP AG and Microsoft Corp. say quick product cycles and nimble understanding of technology trends will only become more important in the coming years. Here at the SAP/Microsoft Technical Education Conference, more than 1,000 developers homed in on emerging technologies playing a role in SAP's R/3 suite of client/server applications, including Java, ActiveX controls, and SAP's newly released Business APIs. "This whole race that we're in right now, with the tools and the change, says that everything we do, we are going to have to redo," said Robert Wenig, director of SAP's new technologies unit, in a morning presentation. Wenig said users will have to plan for multiple user interfaces, workflow and scalability in an intranet world where thousands of anonymous users could access an application. "You have to think, 'What is the peak load of my application?'" he said. Microsoft developers, meanwhile, demonstrated use of the Excel 97 spreadsheet from the Office 97 suite as a front end to R/3 applications. The conference is scheduled to continue for another three days, with hands-on work sessions for the developers. Copyright(c) 1996 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is prohibited. PC Week and the PC Week logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. PC Week Online and the PC Week Online logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Send mail to PC Week