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| Business at SAP |
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Organizational improvements continue
To be successful, aside from its intelligent and practical
products the Company needs an organizational structure that
is geared to SAP’s strategic goals and fully addresses the
challenges facing SAP’s operations. In 2004, the Company
accordingly took further steps to enhance its structures and
optimize its organization.
- In 2004, the Company continued to push ahead with the
globalization of its support and development organizations.
In September, SAP opened a new global support center
(GSC) in Dalian, China, as part of a network including other
GSCs in Ireland, Spain, Austria, and India. The development
organization expanded its development locations, primarily
in India, China, and Bulgaria.
- To rapidly and flexibly respond to customers’ needs for consulting
and integration services based on the SAP NetWeaver
open platform, SAP gathered in its consulting resources in
2004. It acquired an additional 20 % of the shares of its serviceprovider
affiliate SAP Systems Integration AG (SAP SI),
taking its total stake just over the 90 % mark. The aim of the
purchase was to intensify cooperation between SAP SI and
the SAP Group’s consulting and service organization.
- SAP pursues a strategy of buying businesses to supplement
its offering and increase the attractiveness to its range of
solutions. Underscoring this strategy, it acquired U.S. software
company A2i in July 2004. Specifically, SAP acquired
A2i’s expertise and technologies to broaden the master data
management capabilities of the SAP NetWeaver open
integration and application platform.
New collaborative partnerships
SAP entered into new collaboration agreements in 2004 to
help the Company build up its industry expertise, test its developments
under real conditions, and engage partners in
improving its customer offerings.
- SAP’s partnership with Microsoft Corp., which started more
than 10 years ago, was expanded despite the fact that the two
companies compete in the applications market. Notably, the
companies aim to ensure that in the future their technology
platforms, Microsoft .NET and SAP NetWeaver, work better
together. They agreed to a shared plan for the release of certain
technology components and to a patent cross-licensing
arrangement. While these negotiations were in process,
Microsoft approached SAP to sound out the possibility of a
merger. Exploratory talks came to an end in the spring of
2004 and there is no intention of resuming discussions.
- SAP strengthened its collaborative ties with IT company
IBM in the field of solutions for retailers. Among SAP’s
contributions were SAP Retail Store and SAP for Retail; IBM
contributed Store Integration Framework.
- SAP agreed with consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
to share development work on special software and service
packages for grocers to provide accurate, rapid traceability of
individual products.
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