VIENNA: Companies like SAP will drastically enhance their customer engagement spectrum, as competition increases in the enterprise applications space.

Addressing the annual customer and partner conference of SAP here, Henning Kagerman, chairman and CEO of the global ERP giant, said, "Our big focus will be to give a big boost to the competitiveness of our customers."

The conference, SAPPHIRE, which began at the Austrian capital, has been attended by over 8,000 attendees comprising partners, customers, consultants, industry analysts, bloggers, media and SAP officials from all over the world.

SAP now sees its role in an organisation was far beyond just ERP. "Roll out of new products, mergers and building specialisation areas in this direction, is the right step," explained a New York-based analyst, who referred to Kagerman's presentation, which indicated that a large part of SAP's big customers are still undecided on the future course of their platform of preference.

It is, therefore, the right time for SAP to take steps and make announcements that will reassure customers. For instance, there has been a lot of stress on concepts such as measuring corporate performance and ensuring corporate governance, risk management and compliances. SAP is pitching for a role in all these stages.

SAP said customers worldwide have been responding positively towards its All-in-One solutions, with over 10,000 customers in more than 50 countries benefiting from it.

It also announced a new business opportunity for its partners and customers that works on co-innovation as a community collaboration model, especially for banking and insurance applications.

Kagerman supported the need for collaboration when he said, "Individual and team collaboration in enterprises is going to be very important, especially if IT has to be fully leveraged."

Visitors flocked to the three exhibition halls where SAP partners, including Indian players such as TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Genpact displayed products and services.

The company made some major announcements at the conference. The significant one was its tie-up with an old competitor SunGard, a $4 billion software solutions company for financial services sector.

In another significant move SAP announced that it has acquired Wicom, a leading European IP-based solutions company that focuses on contact center and enterprise communications solutions.

These moves are expected to further consolidate SAPs position in BFSI and BPO space.

The firm also revealed that it is looking beyond enterprise applications. Leo Apotheker, deputy CEO of SAP announced that the city of Vienna has chosen SAP to for making life of its residents simple and efficient.

The Vienna City Administration will now run its network, which is one of the largest in Europe, connecting 30,000 employees with 1.7 million residents, on the SAP platform.

The company is aggressively pursuing some of the key e-governance projects in India, currently in the take-off mode.

(The author was in Vienna on SAP's invitation)

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