Advantages of SAP Ecosystem

The advantages of SAP are far too many but simply stated - its principal purpose is to create value for customers. SAP helps to develop business strategy, sets in motion the right business processes, evolves innovative engineering technologies, find appropriate solutions – not to speak of unhindered day-to-day operations.

To effectively create customer value, SAP devises an ecosystem consisting of business persons, developers, and IT services professionals who assume responsibilities for business strategy, business processes, technology, and operations. Within the ecosystem, customers partner and collaborate to achieve results and make sure that all information is free-flowing, dynamic and accessible.

SAP acts as the leader within the SAP community for not only coordinating but also harnessing the collective power of developers, partners, customers, business process experts and all others indispensable for the shared success of each community. The biggest advantage of SAP is it offers a variety of communities and resources to enable customers, partners, and professionals to integrate and collaborate to achieve end-objectives.

SAP customers recognize the need to build relationships within a network, access multidimensional expertise and partner to identify and implement better business solutions. SAP orchestrates a diverse ecosystem relationships, resources, and initiatives to enable its customers to obtain optimal business success.

Within the SAP ecosystem, customers rightfully expect and find qualified expertise, insights, answers that are right for their business. The Ecosystem functions like a well-oiled machine – be it in engaging a new partner or using complementary technology. The SAP ecosystem is indisputably a novel approach to smarter business management that drives measurable results – and benefits the ecosystem.

It is interesting to know that SAP has developed a total approach with three pillars of the SAP Ecosystem - Industry-focused excellence, Community-powered results and Orchestrated co-innovation. Industry-focused excellence – helps SAP customers to quickly identify and deploy solutions appropriate for their own industry and business needs. Community-powered results facilitate the timely linking of people, organizations, and resources as and when needed. Orchestrated co-innovation is meant to bring together diverse and multiple relationships, resources, and communities develop effective solutions in concert with SAP's development efforts.

The powerful impact of SAP ecosystem has meant the beginning of a new era of collaborative innovation for optimizing business successes. As a result, SAP is at the forefront of ushering innovation through a customer-focused ecosystem.

The SAP ecosystem places the customer centrally and leverages the professional expertise of a network of software solution, technology and service partners jointly supporting a common IT platform with the express intent to promote a new level of collaboration for speedier communication and delivery of end-to-end solutions to meet industry-specific customer needs.

SAP bridges the gap between business and IT by engaging diverse members in moderated forums, to drive process innovation through collaboration, best-practice sharing, and collective learning. SAP members receive free trial downloads, training and certification, and the latest information from the community's developer conference.

It is believed that on every single day throughout the world, the SAP ecosystem brings together several thousand customers, partners and business process experts to jointly innovative industry-leading solutions, access and share resources and adopt best practices to further the value of the business process platform in a dynamic ecosystem.

The advantages of SAP ecosystem was succinctly summed up by Stephen Graham, group vice president Software Business Strategies at IDC, when he said "customer-focused ecosystems are win-win-win initiatives. The value of these networks is very compelling for all participants: vendors, partners, and customers. Vendors interested in developing customer-focused ecosystems should look to innovators, such as SAP, for insights into and best practices associated with these networks."

SAP Ecosystem in Action

As part of its platform approach, SAP is building an open ecosystem to drive enterprise SOA adoption; promote co-innovation between SAP, clients and partners; and deliver value for all contributors. Leveraging deep industry knowledge, a various community of partners and SAP NetWeaver as a platform for product and service modernism, SAP and its ecosystem are driving new scope of collaboration–turning breakthrough ideas into innovative solutions for clients.

Zia Yusuf, executive vice president, Global Ecosystem and Partner Group, SAP AG "Every single day, in every region of the world, the SAP ecosystem brings together SAP, thousands of customers, partners, communities of developers and business process experts to co-innovate industry-leading solutions, access resources and share best practices to further the value of the business process platform in a dynamic ecosystem of business networks," said Zia Yusuf, executive vice president, Global Ecosystem and Partner Group, SAP AG. "SAP TechEd embodies the great community work that takes place online globally throughout the year. It is energizing to see how everyone benefits from the collaboration and co-innovation enabled by our thriving ecosystem."

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software. Today, more than 34,600 customers in more than 120 countries run SAP applications–from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize enterprises to suite offerings for global organizations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver platform to drive innovation and enable business change, SAP software helps enterprises of all sizes around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations. SAP solution portfolios support the unique business processes of more than 25 industries, including high tech, retail, financial services, healthcare and the public sector.

SAP consulting ecosystem takes vertical approach

There are various parts to enterprise software giant SAP's ecosystem. Besides its software partners, there are consulting hard that deploy the flagship SAP product line, or SAP's Business One suite for the small and midsize business (SMB) market.

The Business One solution is sale via a reseller channel that includes sales and services partners, and vendors offering vertical extensions. SoftBrands, a long-time ERP vendor to the SMB market, is one such extension partner for Business One. Ralph Suerken, a senior VP with SoftBrands, says when Business One came onto the market, SoftBrands set out to pair a set of manufacturing functionality from its FourthShift ERP product with the Business One suite. The solution–dubbed FourthShift Edition for SAP Business One–was developed using SAP's software development kit.

SAP Ecosystem by the numbers (as of Feb. 2007)

2,000-plus: Number of independent software vendors (ISV) building solutions for the NetWeaver platform 8: Number of Industry Value Networks (IVN) that bring together ISVs, integrators, and end users 650,000: Number of people registered as members of the SAP Developers Network, or SDN. (Members can be with ISVs, end users, or consulting firms–not just SAP.) 80,000: Number of registered members of the Business Process Expert community, encompassing business analysts, consultants, and process developers at ISVs, consulting firms, and end-user companies No official count: While SAP has not issued the exact number of ISVs that have achieved Powered by NetWeaver status–meaning the ISV has a solution certified for use with at least two NetWeaver components–there are dozens of such vendors that serve the manufacturing sector.