Our traditional core customer base includes many large global enterprises as well as midsize companies. These global companies use the SAP Business Suite applications, SAP Business All-in-One solutions, or SAP Business One to automate business transactions, enabling better management and governance. In our traditional core business, we seek to win a greater share of our customers' wallet. We also aim to win new customers, for instance companies that have been using custom software.

Our portfolios of solutions for 26 industries are a crucial factor in our success. In 2008, we focused on strategic industries with exceptional growth potential, including banking, retail, communications, and the public sector.

Delivering solutions for business users – process owners and decision makers – is a central element of our strategy for growth. In 2008, we concluded the acquisition of Business Objects and expanded our core solutions to address what we identify as the three key needs of decision makers in business:

• The need to make decisions more effectively based on a broader array of structured and unstructured data from sources both inside and outside the enterprise
• The desire for better tools and applications to support collaborative decision-making
• The search for a new competitive advantage by creating and managing business networks with partners, suppliers, and customers

Our products focus on these needs to help individuals, teams, and companies better collaborate through business networks.

The SAP Business ByDesign solution is designed to open up a new segment of the global market for us – smaller businesses with between 100 and 500 employees. They have distinctly different software needs: Getting their new IT solution running quickly, at minimum risk and predictable cost, is often more important for these customers than specific functional depth. Many such companies do not believe that their needs can be met by traditional software offerings or by the available on-demand solutions.

The following measures will help us realize our full growth potential:

• Organic growth – Our primary growth strategy is to continue to develop our own product portfolio and our own base of direct customers by winning more customers and by selling more to our existing customers.
• Co-innovation – Collaborating with customers and partners remains one of our central policies. We are investing more in our partner ecosystem. This supports the development of solutions built on the SAP NetWeaver technology platform and leverages sales forces to address the various market and customer segments.
• Smart acquisitions – With targeted strategic and "fill-in" acquisitions that add to our broad solution offering for individual industries or across industries, we gain specific technologies and capabilities to meet the needs of our customers.