>> Significant Asset Management Trends

The Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) market is reaching maturity making it more difficult to differentiate between products. Recent ARC research has identified a number of important new asset management trends that provide opportunity for product differentiation, offer attractive value propositions, and have strong potential for driving future EAM market growth. Your participation in this ARC survey will help to qualify the real value and importance of each of these identified asset management trends.

Those who take the survey will receive a copy of the results for FREE. To take the survey, please click here: www.arcweb.com/ss2/wsb.dll/ARC/EAMTrends.htm

>> Electric Power Industry Capital Expenditure Shows Stark Regional Contrasts

Worldwide capital and operational expenditures for plants in the electric power industry, which totaled more than $374 billion in 2003, will exceed $453 billion by the end of 2008, expanding at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of just under four percent. While China strains to grow a reliable power infrastructure in support of rapid industrial growth, North American spending continues to decline as the recent bulge of generation development, combined with higher natural gas prices, create both a glut of generating capacity and a squeeze on operating margins.

>> New European Standard for RFID in UHF Frequencies

The use of RFID tags in the European Supply Chain has taken a great step forward with the approval by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) of a new standard for the use of RFID in UHF frequencies. This news has even greater impact now that the Frequency Management Working Group of the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations has approved the recommendation to make the frequency band associated with this standard available in their 46 Member countries.

The ETSI Technical Committee - Electromagnetic compatibility and Radio spectrum Matters (ERM), has delivered a two part Standard (EN 302 208) that gives the industry much needed guidance on the minimum characteristics considered necessary to make the best use of the available frequencies for RFID. This new standard will allow companies to market High Power RFID tags and readers in all national markets of the European Union and EFTA, by showing compliance with the European Union Radio & Tele-communications Terminal Equipment Directive (R&TTE Directive).

===== COMPANY NEWS & BRIEFINGS =====

>> Field Report: Apriso Advisory Council Meeting

By Greg Gorbach, ARC Advisory Group

The recent Apriso Advisory Council Meeting was not your typical User's Group meeting. It was more of an intense working session among partners. Led by Apriso, the group tackled some weighty questions about product roadmaps and company direction. The activities ranged from helping contribute to and refine Apriso's mission statement, to some very detailed product functionality areas. It is clear that Apriso highly values the contributions of the group - and for good reason.

Key topics addressed included manufacturer's needs for collaborative Operations Management solutions at the multi-plant level, and the growing demand for Plant to Business (P2B) Interoperability. For obvious reasons I will not go into details about all of the subjects discussed, but suffice it to say that with this kind of a group in place, Apriso will be a force to be reckoned with.

>> SAP and HP Offer Hosted Solutions

SAP America, Inc. and HP introduced new managed solutions for midsize companies that provide software, services and support through a single point of contact at a fixed total monthly cost. The managed solutions will include software and implementation services from SAP. HP offers operations, infrastructure hosting, storage-on-demand, business recovery solutions, managed Web solutions and security services.

"This announcement is quite significant," states John Moore, ARC Advisory Group. "First, SAP, which has not been a big supporter of the hosted software subscription model appears to have acquiesced to a growing industry trend (and possibly a competitive threat), which has seen particular traction in the SMB market, for which this solution is targeted. Secondly, SAP is not only working with HP, but it is also working closely with some of its smaller partners to provide industry specific solutions in such verticals as food & beverage, hi-tech electronics, and oil & gas distribution. This is a savvy move by SAP as one of the main detractors to hosted solutions provided by other suppliers has been their one size fits all approach. By providing more specific vertical industry functionality, an adopter of one of SAP's vertical solutions will receive a certain level of customization not currently found in competing offerings."