GOPA opens transport innovation center

   GOPA IT Consultants has opened a new global Transportation Management (TM) Innovation Center to develop solutions to global transportation challenges and solve problems with how to use new technologies.
   The TM center, located in GOPA’s new U.S. headquarters in San Mateo, Calif., will initially focus on using SAP’s TM platform and the existing consulting practice it has around SAP’s TM and supply chain management packages.
   The work will support services based on SAP’s new TM 8.1 and TM 9.x applications, as well as focus on how to integrate this and other versions through a partner ecosystem. Some of center’s work includes customizing the software for industry-specific transportation requirements, developing an implementation template such as GOPA’s existing Instant TM template, facilitating methodology development from prototyping to rapid implementation, integration of third-party software, and further development of services around SAP Hana, cloud deployments,  and education.
   GOPA said the new center will also leverage the company’s cloud-based, on-demand SAP data center in Walldorf, Germany that runs a shared IT infrastructure data center solution called FlexPod. The technology involved in FlexPod comes from NetApp, Cisco and VMWare. It will pull Bernd Mosbrucker from a 12-year tenure at SAP in Walldorf to lead the operations as the new vice president for GOPA IT Consultants. – Geoff Whiting