| CREATING TOMORROW’S TECHNOLOGIES
From locations around the world, SAP continues to develop business software solutions that address the real-world needs of our
customers. Our research and development efforts are carefully coordinated and broadly diversified, while encouraging the free
flow of ideas that can lead to important new technologies.
The engine behind these and other initiatives is SAP Research, a worldwide organization that identifies emerging IT trends, conducts vital research and development for new technologies, and fosters the best entrepreneurial talent to support future growth. Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, the team members who come from a dozen nations are spread over nine research locations: Karlsruhe, Germany; Palo Alto, USA; Montréal, Canada; Johannesburg, South Africa; Brisbane, Australia; Sophia Antipolis, France, plus the three new European sites which were added in 2004: Darmstadt and Dresden, Germany, and Belfast, United Kingdom. The research organization is divided into two key areas:
- SAP research centers and research groups observe current and upcoming IT trends, determine the business value of new technologies for SAP, and introduce new technology and concepts for future solutions that are of strategic importance to product development, customers, and partners. Currently, SAP research centers have identified the following seven research programs as strategic for SAP: human-computer interaction, enterprise services and semantics, smart items research, security and trust, software engineering and architecture, business process modeling and management, and knowledge management.
- SAP Inspire is an internal group built on a corporate venture model, and sources product-related ideas from a wide range of innovation networks and SAP entrepreneurs. Following a thorough process of business and technical due diligence, SAP Inspire provides support for the development of business concepts that have the potential to establish leadership positions in new markets, and that represent significant growth opportunities for SAP. The goal is to assist entrepreneurs
in transforming innovations into successful businesses.
The following are just a few of the exciting areas pursued by
global R&D programs over the past year.
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