SAP Expands Industry Collaboration Communities to Include Aerospace and Defense, Automotive and Travel and Transportation Industries

by SAP AG

Further delivering on the commitment to promote ecosystem-based innovation and collaboration, SAP AG today announced the launch of industry value networks (IVN) for the aerospace and defense, automotive and travel and transportation industries. These IVNs will begin the process of gathering together customers, partners and systems integrators to identify and prioritize business challenges facing each industry. Within the individual IVNs the groups will collaborate to design and improve industry-relevant business processes and technology solutions. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE(R) '07, SAP's international customer conference, being held in Atlanta, Georgia, April 22 - 25.

"We are proud to add three more industries to the existing family of IVNs," said Zia Yusuf, executive vice president, Global Ecosystem and Partner Group, SAP. "In the past 18 months our IVNs have delivered numerous successes to the industry marketplace including new composite solutions and business processes that have delivered quick value to our customers. SAP's industry expertise, combined with the strength of our ecosystem, has resulted in a remarkable success in focusing on solving critical business issues for our customers."

Aerospace and defense, automotive and travel and transportation join a growing list of industries benefiting from SAP's IVN strategy including banking, chemicals, consumer products, high tech, retail, oil and gas, public sector and forest and paper industries. Following the initial IVN stage of selecting customers, partners and systems integrators to participate, the IVN members will identify priority topics in their respective industry to focus with a goal of designing pre-integrated, standard, end-to-end solutions and services based on a common technology platform, SAP NetWeaver.