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• Ruta-N and SAP Announce Alliance To Support Entrepreneurship and Investment in Medellín
• The Feria 2 Ruedas motorcycle conventionreturns to Medellín May 2-5, bringing commerce, fun & learning opportunities.

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“This alliance reflects our shared commitment to promote economic and social development through technology,” said Perilla, accompanied by Ruta-N’s executive director Carolina Londoño.

SAP’s President for the Northern Region of Latin America and The Caribbean, Marcela Perilla (Photo: Loren Moss)

“This strategic alliance represents a unique opportunity for the more than 460 companies in Medellín and the digital talent that today makes up our ecosystem, providing them access to world-class resources and knowledge,” said Londoño.

Companies that have participated in Ruta-N’s development and entrepreneurship programs will have the opportunity to receive mentoring in innovation through a program called Startup Innovation Journey, which is designed to support the growth and expansion of startups through access to technology and market opportunities offered by SAP.

SAP is Europe’s largest enterprise software provider and produces enterprise resource planning (ERP) software along with other business software solutions for global companies, including human resources, supply chain, and customer experience solutions.

The brand claims in a statement that it owns the world’s largest stock of aged rum, up to 45 years old, which allows Dictador to release a range of innovative rum products to 80 countries around the world.

The limited edition, Dictador Mopa Mopa collection, is 360 bottles, each hand-decorated by Colombian artists. The inspiration for these bottles stems from the ancient tradition of using Mopa Mopa, a native South American phenolic resin, used for centuries in cultural contexts by artisans in the region of Pastó, Colombia, to decorate ceremonial drinking cups known as ‘Qeros.’ The process involves a complex cycle of production whereby sheets of flexible resin are extracted from trees of the genus Elaeagia, which grows in mountainous regions of western South America. This is done without harming the tree during the process.

Dictador says the trek to collect the resin is always done on foot and typically takes up to 5 hours to reach the destination point. Resin gatherers will then set up campsites in the wilderness for 8 to 15 days as they comb through patches of trees for viable harvest. In total, the resin gatherers will collect between 6-9 kilos of Mopa Mopa which will then be sold to varnish masters at a central location closer to town. Mopa Mopa is sacred because of the beauty it makes possible but also because of the effort involved in sourcing it and the rarity of it – the harvest only happens twice a year between May and November.

Because the artistry of Mopa Mopa is so intricate and time-consuming, it cannot be automated for mass production. As a result, the people involved are crucial in the making of these limited-edition bottles. Like many indigenous processes, the harvesting of Mopa Mopa and the ancestral knowledge of the Pastó varnish application process is under threat of being lost due to deforestation and agricultural encroachment. It is because of the passion and commitment of these local people that this artform has been kept alive.

The certification, which comes after a periodic review process, also endorses that the company is following the established managed services practices required by SAP, a German enterprise software provider.

The audit of the center, located in the neighborhood of Suba, was conducted by SAP professionals and looked at its compliance with processes including data availability, incident management, support, and customer relations.

The audit was performed in March, and the recertification is valid for two years, until March 31, 2019.

“This recertification underscores the quality of our data centers’ footprint, the solidity of our processes and products, and our level of professionalism,” said Gabriel del Campo, regional vice president of data centers and security for Level 3 Latin America. “Our customers can count on the certainty of knowing Level 3 is recognized in the region as a certified provider of IT infrastructure services for critical environments.”

The same SAP Hosting Partner recertification was also granted after audits of the company’s data centers in Peru and Chile. The company maintains data centers in both Lima and Santiago, the respective capitals of the the two South American nations.

While the international push by Oracle’s NetSuite global business unit is primarily focused on adding data centers — which will grow from five to 11 across the world — it is also establishing 13 international field offices.

In addition to its new location in Colombia, Oracle’s push into Latin America will include new NetSuite field offices in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile. Throughout the rest of the world, offices will also be launched in France, Germany, Sweden, Dubai, China, India, Malaysia, and New Zealand. On top of these expansions, the company says it will hire more employees in the field offices that are already operating.

“Leveraging Oracle’s global scale, we are able to massively accelerate NetSuite’s vision of bringing a single unified suite to companies all over the world,” said Jim McGeever, executive vice president of Oracle’s NetSuite global business unit. “Oracle’s technology infrastructure and global reach enable us to help ensure customer success no matter where they are located in the world.”

The Silicon Valley-based technology giant paid $9.3 billion USD to acquire NetSuite last year, formally completing the acquisition in November.

NetSuite — which competes with the likes of SalesForce and SAP and provides services including enterprise resource planning, human resources, and omnichannel commerce — is also planning to bring six new data centers online. The centers will be located in the United Sates (Chicago), Germany  (Frankfurt), Australia, Singapore, Japan, and China, according to Oracle.

The company says this will greatly expand the service’s reach and capability beyond the already-existing data centers used by NetSuite’s global business unit, which are currently limited to North America (where three centers are located) and Europe (where two centers reside in Amsterdam and Dublin).

“The addition of Oracle data centers to NetSuite’s operations will provide even greater security, redundancy, performance, and scalability for new and existing customers across the globe,” said the company in a statement.

To further support its international growth, Oracle NetSuite’s global business unit also plans to add several development centers to its roster. At least three will be added in India, China, and Japan.

Photo credit: King of Hearts

Carlos Palafox, Praxis Specialty Manager

With SAP solutions in the financial sector, Praxis intends to benefit those clients who wish to launch a mobile platform for supporting their retail banking processes. New generations of consumers are not used to visiting bank branches, rather they are inclined towards a virtual world for obtaining the answer to their queries, and in many cases they expect these to be delivered via a mobile customer experience.
“The increase of SAP solutions in the financial sector in Latin America, was balanced by a sharp increase in the sale of software licenses in Mexico and Brazil, focusing on innovation, evolution and balancing the SAP business in the region with the cloud and continuous evolution. In Colombia, we expect to have the same results with the innovative spirit that rules among Colombian companies,” explains Carlos Palafox, Praxis Specialty Manager.
According to SAP, more than 1600 Colombian companies with 291,000 users are currently using SAP software and ERP solutions.