Panaya

It's with great pleasure that Panaya announces that Mr. Udi Ziv will be joining Panaya's board of directors. Mr. Udi Ziv currently serves as Chief Product Officer at NICE systems, a position he has held since October 2008.

Prior to joining NICE, Mr. Ziv held several senior executive positions with SAP AG from 2001 until 2007. Those positions included General Manager of SAP's Small Business Solutions; Managing Director of SAP Labs Israel; and Vice President responsible for the research & development of the SAP Portal product.

Before joining SAP, Mr. Ziv was one of the original members and head of the global R&D team at
Top Tier Software, a leading enterprise portal company which was acquired by SAP in 2001. "I am excited to have Mr. Ziv as a board director." Said Yossi Cohen founder & CEO of Panaya "Udi's track record in scaling TopTier through its acquisition by SAP and his in-depth familiarity with SAP and its market brings a tremendous contribution to a company like Panaya."

"Panaya brings unique value to the SAP install base, revolutionizing their approach to upgrades, and significantly reducing their TCO." Said Udi Ziv "Panaya is adding new customers at an incredible pace, and I am very happy to be able to bring my experience to play, helping Panaya become an even more successful company."

Panaya provides a unique Software as a Service (SaaS) for companies who use SAP to run their operations. Using Panaya's patented supercomputer technology SAP professionals can negotiate version upgrades with minimal risk and cost. Panaya's simulation shows which custom SAP programs will break as a result of an upgrade, explains how to fix them, derives the most efficient test plan, and calculates the required budget and resources for the project. Panaya was founded in 2006 and serves SAP customers around the world.

On February 15 Panaya released a new and improved version of the Panaya SAP upgrade solution. The new version highlights are:

• Modification Solver

Panaya now provides automation of the tedious, risky and error-prone process of modification adjustment (SPAU, SPDD). The modification solver differentiates between note implementation (including manual implementation) and real modifications, and provides a concrete to-do list for each modification and note. Best practice methodology is incorporated into the process so each modification and note gets adjustment action items that best fit the individual scenario.

• Improved progress tracking

Panaya keeps track of your upgrade project progress. By regularly analyzing the customer system Panaya can automatically detect corrections that have been carried out and new defects that need to be resolved. Project leaders can use the Panaya realization & go live reports to monitor their project progress.

• New functionality and look for project management

The task overview page was elaborated and now contains summary for each task type. The task details page functionality and look were enhanced. The page now provides more comprehensive information about each task including change history, description of required action, related objects and tasks and multiple comments.

Despite the Economy, SAP Customers Are Moving Ahead with Upgrade Plans
Survey Conducted by Panaya Reveals Most SAP Upgrades Remain on Schedule for 2009

A new survey suggests that most SAP customers are moving ahead with their current plans for upgrading their SAP systems to SAP ERP 6.0, despite the economic downturn. 152 European and North American SAP customers and system integrators participated in the survey, which was conducted by Panaya, Inc.

According to the survey, nearly three out of every four projects remain on schedule, and only 11% are delayed beyond 2009. At the same time, 28% of the companies that are not delaying the upgrade are looking to complete the project with a lower budget.

The most cited reason for upgrading was the "end of maintenance" for the current version used by the organization.

According to survey respondents, the greatest challenges are in the planning phase of the project. The top challenge cited is estimating the upgrade project cost/effort (cited by 40% of the respondents), followed by justifying the project budget (36%) and assessing the impact on existing solutions (31%).

The survey was conducted to help companies address some of these challenges by providing metrics they can use to validate their planning assumptions. Some of the metrics provided include:

• The average overall project duration for an organization with less than 100 users is 26 weeks, while the average duration for an organization with over 10,000 users is 63 weeks.

• The average project effort for organizations with less than 100 users is 395 person days, while the average for organizations with over 10,000 users is 13,516 days.

• 88% of the SAP customers surveyed use the help of a third party partner in the upgrade project. More than half of the companies (56%) outsource at least half of the project work.

A free copy of the complete survey results is available for download at the Panaya website
http://www.panayainc.com/sap-upgrade-survey.html

Survey charts and images can be downloaded at http://www.flickr.com/photos/panayainc 

About Panaya
Panaya provides a Software as a Service (SaaS) for companies that use SAP. Using Panaya's patented supercomputer technology, SAP professionals can negotiate version upgrades with minimal risk and cost. Panaya's simulation shows which custom SAP programs will break as a result of an upgrade, explains how to fix them, derives the most efficient test plan, and calculates the required budget the resources for the project. Panaya was founded in 2006 and serves SAP customers around the world. For more information, please visit http://www.panayainc.com