SAP to acquire visualisation software firm Right Hemisphere

Peter Maier, general manager and head of SAP's line of business solutions unit, says the new capabilities will help users "accelerate time to market, increase people and asset productivity and improve information quality and processes". Pointing to the fact that the two companies share numerous joint customers already seeing benefits of a combination approach, he says: "Right Hemisphere technology empowers customers to visualise business processes from design to manufacturing, through sales, operations and service… [We are] helping people to easily cooperate and communicate using the most powerful human sense – vision." Meanwhile, Michael Lynch, CEO of Right Hemisphere says the combination "will change the way businesses of any size create, manage and deliver products and services" across their organisations and supply chains. "By bringing 3D to the enterprise and enriching it with business data, we're setting a new standard in helping companies achieve more efficiency, accuracy and flexibility across the value chain," insists Lynch. Users of SAP's Business Suite ERP software, for example, will be able to get animated views of products and assets, helping the teams involved in development, manufacturing and service to improve design collaboration, and the generation of assembly instructions and service procedures and manuals. SAP's Maier reckons that the resulting instant access to contextual visual information will enable users to increase the speed of decision-making across all departments. He cites organisations that rely on partners and supply chains – pointing out that, through integrated visualisation of products and processes, design and process changes can be communicated immediately. "Instead of relying on static images, Right Hemisphere and SAP will provide companies [with] an intuitive visual format, giving all workers, across geographies, complete, up-to-date visual assembly and maintenance instructions and variant simulations, resulting in fewer errors and delays," he says.