SAP AG today announced plans to combine two of its subsidiaries, SAP Markets, Inc., and SAP Portals, Inc., into one subsidiary that will offer integration technologies and applications designed for heterogeneous system environments through the use of open standards.
SAP intends to deliver the combined company’s solutions to customers as part of mySAP technology and other mySAP.com solutions. It will also license them to other technology companies for distribution with third-party software offerings.
SAP says the combined company will maintain its mission to provide an open integration technology for unifying people, content and business processes.
Building on a single platform, which combines an enterprise portal with content management and exchange technology, the company plans to deliver a suite of business solutions for supplier relationship management, extended e-selling and business intelligence.
SAP says the solution suite allows collaboration by unifying applications, information and Web services for increased efficiency and maximized value within extended business networks.
“Both SAP Markets and SAP Portals have continually proven themselves able to develop, sell and maintain technology platforms and business solutions that benefit companies no matter how heterogeneous their environments,” says Hasso Plattner, co-chairman of the executive board, chief executive officer and co-founder of SAP AG.
“Customers pursuing integration projects are increasingly demanding solutions that incorporate both SAP Markets and SAP Portals software. By centralizing these initiatives in one entity and leveraging our relationship with Commerce One, we will increase deployment of these technologies in non-SAP environments,” he explains.
Together, SAP Markets and SAP Portals currently provide products to more than 5,000 companies. The combined SAP subsidiary will continue to evolve current solutions and expand the partnerships SAP Markets and SAP Portals have with firms like: Commerce One, Inc. , Yahoo!
, Accenture Ltd.
, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and PwC Consulting.
“This is exciting news from SAP because it reinforces the decision we made to partner with SAP and SAP Markets more than 20 months ago,” says Mark Hoffman, CEO of Commerce One.
“For Commerce One, this move means we can more efficiently partner with one dedicated organization that offers the complete set of integration technologies and collaborative applications which will allow our customers to be more competitive.”
The combined company will be headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., and employ a total of 1,700 people for its offices in New York, Chicago, Houston, France, Germany, Great Britain, Israel and Singapore.
Shai Agassi, currently CEO of SAP Portals, will take on the role of chief executive officer, while Plattner will serve as chairman of the board.
