Reduce Risk in ERP/Packaged Applications
CAST’s automated analysis and measurement capabilities covering SAP, Siebel and PeopleSoft address the growing need for consistent and objective measurement of these popular enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms to eliminate costly customization errors.
- Find and fix the root causes of erratic performance quickly
- Control rising maintenance & enhancement costs
- Manage development schedules and quality of deliverables
- Execute upgrades and patches reliably
CAST’s sophisticated pattern-matching algorithms are specifically tuned to measuring quality (performance, stability and maintainability) in the ERP environment. Specifically for ERP packaged applications, CAST has about 100 pattern matching rules each for SAP and Siebel and about 400 engineering rules unique to PeopleSoft.
CAST detects changes between the original core application and the customized application, or between a patched and un-patched version of the same application. Along with detailed architectural visibility and objective measures of quality hot spots, CAST gives IT organizations and systems integrators a detailed, practical road map for sequencing their development, maintenance and upgrade tasks.
What makes CAST Essential?
SAP, Siebel, Oracle and PeopleSoft are environments where applications require a deceptively high level of customization, significantly increasing business disruption risk. In these complex environments, manual measurement of quality is too expensive and time consuming so automated analysis and measurement is essential for reliably exposing flaws that cause applications to perform erratically.
Why is CAST Unique?
We often get asked, "What's wrong with the code checkers supplied by the ERP vendors themselves?" Good question. There's nothing wrong with these tools except that they don't go nearly far enough. While there's some overlap with SAP's Solutions Manager, CAST's automated analysis and measurement of the SAP environment complements SAP's solution.
Here are a handful of key points where we add distinct value:
- We measure the product itself, not the process by which it is customized. Specifically, we accurately quantify the quality and size of customization done by internal or outsourced teams.
- Our coverage of the SAP environment goes beyond all the SAP-related technologies. These additions (like SQL calls to an Oracle RDBMS) are often critical to the performance and stability of ERP systems in the production environment.
- Finally, and probably most importantly, the types of problems CAST detects go beyond those that can be detected in functional and non-functional testing. These are problems that have to do with the structural quality -- the way in which the system is architecturally put together. The problems here can remain deeply hidden and have serious consequences. We've studied this carefully in a number of our customer environments and have developed a reliable way to quickly find and fix these difficult problems.