Partnerships and strategic alliances are a key element of our efforts to broaden the solutions and services offered to SAP customers and to extend the markets for our products and services. We characterize our partnerships and strategic alliances into eight categories that together constitute a partner services network.

The partner categories are: services partners, technology partners, software partners, hosting partners, business partners, content partners, education partners, and support partners.

Within most categories, our partners may achieve the status of a local or global partner. We expect our alliance partners to provide customers with joint strategic solutions. Our partners generally have a strong position in a particular line of business or cross-industry process and complement the range of SAP solutions in these areas.

Our partner network includes thousands of companies, including independent software vendors, systems integrators, and business procurement outsourcing (BPO) providers across all partner categories.