Advertisment

NetWeaver gains momentum in APAC

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update

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.

Advertisment

"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

Advertisment

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."

Advertisment

"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

Advertisment

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.

Advertisment

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.

Advertisment

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.

Advertisment

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.

 

tech-news