BANGALORE: SAP Asia Pacific today
announced that it has seen a triple-figure increase in SAP NetWeaver® revenue
growth quarter-on-quarter between Q1 and Q2 2005. First introduced in January
2003, SAP's application and integration platform is increasingly the choice
for Asia Pacific enterprises looking to integrate their operations around open
and agile technology developed around the business processes most important to
their business. This growth follows the expansion of the SAP NetWeaver Asia
Pacific developer and partner communities and availability of new resources
supporting the platform in the region.
"SAP NetWeaver is the fulfilment
of SAP's promise of business integration to help our customers gain faster
return on investment, foster growth, innovation and value," said Simon
Dale, Vice President of SAP NetWeaver Business Development, SAP Asia Pacific.
"The continually growing adoption of SAP NetWeaver in the first half of the
year is further evidence Asia Pacific businesses recognise our value proposition
as the only applications provider offering a proven platform today centred
around customer freedom-be it operating system, database or applications.
Customers and analysts are continuing to confirm our 'applistructure'
service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach is years ahead of competing vendors
and focused on the area businesses care about most-business processes. With
our Business Process Platform roadmap on track and more than half-way complete,
we expect the rate of adoption will grow even more exponentially in the
region."
SAP NetWeaver: Customer Choice for
Adaptability and Lower TCO
Over 35% of the growth in SAP's
NetWeaver revenue in the region was due to new SAP Exchange Infrastructure (SAP
XI) and SAP Master Data Management (SAP MDM) customers. Airservices Australia,
Comalco Aluminium, Telstra, Telecom New Zealand Ltd., Mahindra & Mahindra
Ltd., and SCA Hygiene Australasia are a few of many organizations that have
recently selected SAP XI in the region because it reduces the number of
development platforms required by an organisation, supports open industry
standards and covers the entire solution lifecycle, including design, middleware,
deployment and change.
SCA Hygiene Australasia, a manufacturer
of leading household hygiene brands operating across New Zealand, Australia and
Fiji, has been benefiting from the seamless integration with non-SAP
applications enabled by SAP XI, enabling full supply chain visibility. Gerard
Guinane, IT director, SCA Hygiene Australasia, says: "At SCA, everything
either starts or finishes with SAP. The success of our supply chain is dependent
on all the systems and processes that integrate with our SAP solution. As we
strive to improve our customer delivery performance any weak link can
significantly disrupt the entire supply chain."
"SAP NetWeaver offers customers
the unique dual benefits of enhanced differentiation through business process
innovation and increased productivity through technology consolidation and
standardization," added Dale. "Both combine to drive down the cost of
doing business for our customers, while expanding their ability to adapt more
quickly to changing market conditions."
SAP NetWeaver Partner Power
To date, 855 ISV solutions have
achieved Powered by SAP NetWeaver and Certified for SAP NetWeaver status. The
upsurge in ISV interest marks a turning point in the market as SAP's partner
ecosystem reaches maturity and ISVs race to build and deploy solutions on SAP
NetWeaver. The SAP NetWeaver platform gives ISVs an environment to create
next-generation IT solutions using open standards-based services with ESA and
the opportunity to leverage dedicated marketing and promotional benefits that
SAP reserves for its partners. Along with Shai Agassi's visit to the region in
early July this year, SAP announced its first SAP NetWeaver Independent Software
Vendor (ISV) in the region, ComGroup, which has already released Asia Pacific's
first Powered by NetWeaver certified solution in China.
Announced today, the Industry Value
Networks process brings together partners, customers and SAP industry solution
experts to collaborate in addressing customer pain points through the
development of enterprise services. SAP NetWeaver as a platform provides
partners with the technical capabilities to build and deploy the most
comprehensive enterprise solutions and the unique opportunity through ESA and
the Industry Value Networks process to align with 28 industry concentrations
that cater to more than 28,000 enterprise customers worldwide.
During Q2, SAP announced the
availability of free certification to Powered by SAP NetWeaver (PBNW) for ISV's
who adopt the SAP NetWeaver platform and are certified before the end of
November 2005. For the systems integrators, SAP launched the SAP NetWeaver SI
program in Singapore, Malaysia, Korea and Taiwan with eight new partners joining
the program during the quarter.
SAP announced in May 2005 that the
technology market leaders Adobe, Cisco, Computer Associates, EMC, Intel,
Macromedia, Mercury, Microsoft, Symantec and VERITAS are aligning around SAP's
ESA. These SAP partners plan to license ESA to provide "Enterprise
Services-Ready" solutions that will deliver on the promise of Web services
by providing enhanced flexibility, greater speed, lowered costs and diminished
risk. The partners' commitment provides clear evidence of significant market
adoption of and momentum around SAP's approach to next-generation customer
architecture.
SAP also partners with other technology
leaders such as Microsoft (Mendocino) and IBM
(optimized DB2
for SAP), and open source Linux vendors such as Red Hat to deliver innovative
solutions for joint customers that constantly seek to lower the TCO of
application infrastructure.
Expanding Regional NetWeaver
Resources.
The Asia Pacific SAP NetWeaver business
development team has expanded recently with a number of strategic hires. Derek
Judge has joined from Business Objects to take on the role of Director of
Business Analytics for SAP Asia Pacific. In his new role, Mr. Judge will focus
on growing market share for SAP Analytics across the Asia Pacific region by
leveraging opportunities in the enterprise, mid-market and SME sectors (see
related release).
Coming from Oracle Asia Pacific, Atul
Patel joins the NetWeaver Regional Business Development (BD) team as SAP MDM BD
Manager for APA, based in Singapore. He will be responsible for showcasing SAP
MDM's ability to provide a single version of the truth for customer, product,
employee, supplier, or user-defined data objects as part of SAP NetWeaver.
Reflecting the importance of Java to
the NetWeaver platform, Taib Lokman has been added to the NetWeaver Regional BD
team as SAP Asia Pacific's resident Java Evangelist. He will be responsible
for mobilizing the APA Java community in both the customer and Partner/ISV
worlds around NetWeaver and the SAP Developer Network (SDN: http://www.sdn.sap.com).
Plans are also in the pipeline to
increase SAP development employees from 2,000 to 4,000 professionals by the end
of 2006. The plans are part of a €20 million expansion program that is being
implemented in India which will result in the emergence of the India centre as a
major hub for SAP NetWeaver development.
SAP further advanced its commitment to
developers in India with the recent launch of its first SAP NetWeaver Center of
Excellence (COE) located at the SAP Labs campus in Bangalore, India. Housed in
SAP's largest development facility outside of Germany, the COE will facilitate
the process of educating SAP partners in India and Asia Pacific on the SAP
NetWeaver platform to enable faster adoption of the Enterprise Services
Architecture (ESA). The COE also provides support on a project basis to assist
SAP partners in developing prototype and pilot solutions for unique customer
requirements, and migrating legacy systems onto the SAP NetWeaver platform.
The Asia Pacific SAP Developer Network
(SDN) Community grew by 33% quarter-on-quarter between Q1 and Q2 2005 and now,
at more than 30,000, represents a quarter of the global SAP developer community.
During the first half of 2005, SAP Asia Pacific completed the localisation of
the SDN developer portal into Korean, Chinese and Japanese, which SAP Executive
Board Member Shai Agassi launched at major events in Korea, China and Japan
respectively.
Successful SAP NetWeaver Technology
Tour Developer Days
Reaching over 4,500 developers, SAP
NetWeaver Technology Days in Bangalore, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo Singapore,
Korea and Australia have also been adding to the buzz surrounding NetWeaver in
the region. Across ten stops in Asia Pacific, the SAP NetWeaver Technology Tour
provided advanced sessions on cutting edge topics like NetWeaver Developer
Studio, Visual Composer, Exchange Infrastructure and more-all led by experts
from SAP and technology partners. This tour was supported by Sun and Intel with
whom SAP is working to strengthen the Java development community in the
enterprise market.
Â