Next look at your business and determine the broader category of what you do. Are you a discrete manufacturer, a process manufacturer (using formulas or recipes), or are you a service based company? Is your company heavily retail with Point of Sale needs? ERP software is segmented by the various niches that a company can fall into. This makes it easier to narrow down the field of software to look at. Be sure to look at the size in sales and see what Tier of ERP software you might fit into. Tier 1 is for larger multinationals or companies with many diverse business units. Tier 2 is for the companies with one to many branches doing similar things. Tier 3 looks at smaller single site companies that do not have very complex processes.
For example. If you are work for a company with four manufacturing facilities, all making roughly the same sort of products, and your revenues are are under $250 million dollars, then you are a good candidate for a Tier 2 ERP software. The following is a sample list of some main ERP software vendors: (There is a more comprehensive list at http://www.erpandmore.com/erp-vendors.)

Tier 1 ERP Software

* SAP
* Oracle
* JD Edwards

Tier 2 ERP Software

* SSA ERP LN
* Epicor Vantage
* QAD
* IFS
* IBS
* Microsoft Dynamics AX (or NV)

Tier 3 ERP Software

* Made-2-Manage
* Microsoft Dynamics GP
* Intuitive Software
* Global Shop
* DBA Software
* Epicor Vista

Once you have narrowed down your criteria to which tier you fit into and then you can start investigating the focus niches of each of these systems. From that you can then compare your specific requirements to the functionality of each of the targeted the ERP systems. The selection process should be deliberate and there are many pitfalls. once you have a few ERP vendors that you are working with, you can then narrow it down to the 2 or 3 based on requirements to have them show you the system in detail. This detailed system review should be done completely based on the requirements and should show the daily processing of your business processes. Don’t forget too that you are also looking at a vendor with whom you can work for the next few years. It is like a marriage and so you want to make sure that the partner you are selecting is one you can live with. When you finally select the system, ensure that you do reference checks. The ERP software vendors will always give you favorable clients to contact. But remember that often what is unsaid is more important than what is said. If you visit the references, be sure to watch transactions being entered. Try to see how the people are using the system. Learn from their mistakes too! Find out what went right and wrong during their implementations. Often these lessons learned will help you in your implementation.
In summary, ERP Software is very complex and requires more time and diligence than people realize. When selecting, it can be overwhelming. As such, a third party may be able to assist you. Take a look at consultants who are unbiased and specialize in helping companies select systems. But if you choose to do it on your own, make sure that you have your baseline of requirements to lead you through. Focus on the business process and the business needs, not only on the look and feel of the software. If you keep coming back to the requirements, you will ultimately see which ERP Software works for you.

Server virtualization, also known as hardware virtualization, is a hot topic in the IT world because of the potential for serious economic benefits. Server virtualization enables multiple operating systems to run on a single physical machine as virtual machines (VMs). With server virtualization, you can consolidate workloads of underutilized server machines onto a smaller number of fully utilized machines. Fewer physical machines can lead to reduced costs through lower hardware, energy, and management overhead, plus the creation of a more dynamic IT infrastructure. To learn more about Microsoft and virtualization, please visit the Virtualization Web site, or the Virtualization TechCenter.

With Windows Server 2008, everything needed to support server virtualization is available as an integral feature of the operating system as Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. With Hyper-V as a role, plus flexible licensing policies, it’s now easier than ever to take advantage of the cost savings of virtualization through Windows Server 2008:

Microsoft has now released the final version of Hyper-V, which is now available for download. You can download the update for Hyper-V RTM here and experience the improved stability, usability and performance.
Introducing Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, allows you to make the best use of your server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines (VMs) running on a single physical machine. With Hyper-V, you can also efficiently run multiple different operating systems—Windows, Linux, and others—in parallel, on a single server, and fully leverage the power of x64 computing.

Core Scenarios for Hyper-V
Hyper-V provides a dynamic, reliable, and scalable virtualization platform combined with a single set of integrated management tools to manage both physical and virtual resources, enabling you to create an agile and dynamic data center. Hyper-V enables:
Server Consolidation

Businesses are under pressure to ease management and reduce costs while retaining and enhancing competitive advantages, such as flexibility, reliability, scalability, and security. The fundamental use of virtualization to help consolidate many servers on a single system while maintaining isolation helps address these demands. One of the main benefits of server consolidation is a lower total cost of ownership (TCO), not just from lowering hardware requirements but also from lower power, cooling, and management costs.

Businesses also benefit from server virtualization through infrastructure optimization, both from an asset utilization standpoint as well as the ability to balance workloads across different resources. Improved flexibility of the overall environment and the ability to freely integrate 32-bit and 64-bit workloads in the same environment is another benefit

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Business continuity is the ability to minimize both scheduled and unscheduled downtime. That includes time lost to routine functions, such as maintenance and backup, as well as unanticipated outages. Hyper-V includes powerful business continuity features, such as live backup and quick migration, enabling businesses to meet stringent uptime and response metrics.

Disaster recovery is a key component of business continuity. Natural disasters, malicious attacks, and even simple configuration problems like software conflicts can cripple services and applications until administrators resolve the problems and restore any backed up data. Leveraging the clustering capabilities of Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V now provides support for disaster recovery (DR) within IT environments and across data centers, using geographically dispersed clustering capabilities. Rapid and reliable disaster and business recovery helps ensure minimal data loss and powerful remote management capabilities.

Testing and Development

Testing and development are frequently the first business functions to take advantage of virtualization technology. Using virtual machines, development staffs can create and test a wide variety of scenarios in a safe, self-contained environment that accurately approximates the operation of physical servers and clients. Hyper-V maximizes utilization of test hardware which can help reduce costs, improve life cycle management, and improve test coverage. With extensive guest OS support and checkpoint features, Hyper-V provides a great platform for your test and development environments.

Dynamic Data Center

Hyper-V, together with your existing system management solutions, such as Microsoft System Center, can help you realize the dynamic data center vision of providing self-managing dynamic systems and operational agility. With features like automated virtual machine reconfiguration, flexible resource control, and quick migration, you can create a dynamic IT environment that uses virtualization to not only respond to problems, but also to anticipate increased demands.
Key Features of Hyper-V:

New and Improved Architecture

New 64-bit micro-kernelized hypervisor architecture enables Hyper-V to provide a broad array of device support methods and improved performance and security.

Broad OS Support

Broad support for simultaneously running different types of operating systems, including 32-bit and 64-bit systems across different server platforms, such as Windows, Linux, and others

Symmetric Multiprocessors (SMP) Support

Ability to support up to four multiple processors in a virtual machine environment enables you to take full advantage of multi-threaded applications in a virtual machine. 

Network Load Balancing

Hyper-V includes new virtual switch capabilities. This means virtual machines can be easily configured to run with Windows Network Load Balancing (NLB) Service to balance load across virtual machines on different servers. 

New Hardware Sharing Architecture

With the new virtual service provider/virtual service client (VSP/VSC) architecture, Hyper-V provides improved access and utilization of core resources, such as disk, networking, and video. 

Quick Migration

Hyper-V enables you to rapidly migrate a running virtual machine from one physical host system to another with minimal downtime, leveraging familiar high-availability capabilities of Windows Server and System Center management tools. 

Virtual Machine Snapshot

Hyper-V provides the ability to take snapshots of a running virtual machine so you can easily revert to a previous state, and improve the overall backup and recoverability solution. 

Scalability

With support for multiple processors and cores at the host level and improved memory access within virtual machines, you can now vertically scale your virtualization environment to support a large number of virtual machines within a given host and continue to leverage quick migration for scalability across multiple hosts.  

Extensible 

Standards-based Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interfaces and APIs in Hyper-V enable independent software vendors and developers to quickly build custom tools, utilities, and enhancements for the virtualization platform.
Note: Microsoft believes that most customers now expect virtualization capabilities in their server OS. However, based on customer demand, Windows Server 2008 will be able to be licensed without Hyper-V. To learn more, please visit the Licensing without Hyper-V page.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager
System Center Virtual Machine Manager is a comprehensive heterogeneous management solution for the virtualized data center. Virtual Machine Manager enables increased physical server utilization, centralized management of virtual machine infrastructure and rapid provisioning of new virtual machines by the administrator and authorized end users. Virtual Machine Manager provides the best solution for leveraging existing IT administrative skills and processes for managing the virtual and physical environment.

 To learn more, please visit the System Center Virtual Machine Manager Web site