SAP Global Ecosystem Shows Significant Growth in Asia-Pacific Region

by SAP AG

Inaugural SAP(R) TechEd Event in Shanghai Draws Unprecedented Number of Attendees to Collaborate, Innovate and Explore Business Benefits of Enterprise SOA

SAP AG today announced significant growth in its ecosystem across the Asia-Pacific region, as new members join SAP communities to share best practices and explore the business benefits of enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA). Highlighting the expanding importance of the Asia-Pacific region, SAP also announced that Asia-Pacific customers and partners have more than doubled their membership and activities within SAP communities of innovation over the past year. Extending those communities from online virtual interaction to a physical location and in-person interaction, more than 1,300 SAP customers and partners will attend SAP(R) TechEd '07 Shanghai this week to learn how to better harness the power and flexibility of enterprise SOA to transform existing business processes. The announcement was made at SAP TechEd '07 Shanghai, being held in Shanghai, China, November 6-8, 2007.

Community Network Growth Spikes Across Asia-Pacific Region

The SAP community network has seen significant growth in the Asia-Pacific region over the last year. The SAP(R) Developer Network (SDN) and Business Process Expert communities together grew from 153,000 to 299,000 members in the last year, showing a nearly 100 percent increase in overall membership across the region. Weekly page views and interactions on the community sites also increased by 100 percent over the last year, rising from 600,000 to 1.2 million page views per month.

This growth is being fueled by SAP's business expansion in the Asia- Pacific region and accelerated by translated and localized content available on the SDN and Business Process Expert community Web sites in Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

The SDN and Business Process Expert communities enable customers, partners, developers and employees to engage with IT and business professionals across the globe to share expertise and best practices related to SAP solutions and enterprise SOA. Participation in these communities -- which is free and open to all who are interested in collaborating -- helps members to engage in collaborative innovation, deploy SAP solutions more quickly and benefit from the collective knowledge of the SAP worldwide community.

SAP TechEd Comes to China

SAP TechEd '07 Shanghai marks the first time SAP has held one of the influential ecosystem education conferences in China. With 10 partners participating as sponsors, the event will welcome more than 1,300 attendees, and will include more than 40 hours of educational sessions and workshops over two days.

"SAP has chosen to locate one of its most important ecosystem events of the year in Shanghai in recognition of China's rapidly growing enterprise software market and increasing importance as a leader in global IT innovation," said Zia Yusuf, executive vice president, Global Ecosystem and Partner Group, SAP AG. "We chose to commit our energies and resources to the Asia-Pacific region to further foster the strong partner-driven growth and innovation that we're now seeing. With plans for expanded SDN and Business Process Expert community sites and increased focus on local partnerships, SAP is moving even further on its commitment and investment in ecosystem activities in China, Japan, Korea and other countries across the region."

SAP Ecosystem in Action

The SAP ecosystem continues to foster communities of innovation. Below are some recent highlights from the SAP ecosystem regarding new programs, momentum for existing programs and industry recognition:

• At SAP TechEd '07 Munich, SAP extended its training and education programs with the launch of a new role-based enterprise architect certification program (see Oct. 17, 2007 press release titled, "SAP Introduces Enterprise Architect Certification Program"). The certification programs, hosted by the SDN and Business Process Expert communities, help IT professionals within the SAP ecosystem to develop skills and help create guidelines to train those working with SAP solutions.
• As further indication of the growth of the SAP ecosystem, IDC recently declared the SAP ecosystem an economy of its own (see Oct. 1, 2007 press release titled, "Leading Research Firm Declares SAP Ecosystem an Economy of its Own").