Thursday, 30 August 2007

SAP’s Indian Customer Base Doubles

Software behemoth SAP has bullishly announced that its customer base in India has soared by 1000 in a space of just 12 months.Making the announcement in conjunction with the first-ever visit to India by the entire SAP Executive Board...

Software behemoth SAP has bullishly announced that its customer base in India has soared by 1000 in a space of just 12 months.

Making the announcement in conjunction with the first-ever visit to India by the entire SAP Executive Board ,SAP said that its Indian customers have risen from 1,000 to 2,000 since August 2006 and that it is also the first enterprise software vendor in India to cross the 1000 customer mark.

“Markets like India are at an inflection point when it comes to the adoption of technology by businesses of all shapes and sizes. For instance, it took us nine years in India to reach the 1,000 customer mark, and only one to double it,” said Henning Kagermann, CEO and chairman of the executive board, SAP.

Globally, SAP has set itself a goal of reaching 100,000 customers by 2010. In order to achieve this goal, the company plans to significantly expand the addressable market for enterprise software solutions by aggressively targeting small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) and emerging markets. Markets such as India and China will play a central role in helping the company achieve its vision.

SAP said its fastest growing segments for India is the SMEs and claims fame through its SAP All-in-One and Business One solutions that are targeted at this market.

“Today, Indian SMEs are as aggressive and confident in their business outlook as their larger counterparts and demand enterprise solutions that are powerful and robust enough to handle strong growth,” said Lйo Apotheker, deputy CEO and member of the executive board, SAP AG.

During its maiden visit to India, the German headquartered MNC also reaffirmed its promise to invest 1 billion dollars in India by 2010.

A major portion of SAP’s investment in India will be targeted at expanding the company’s global development and services and support hub in India, SAP Labs.

“SAP Labs India is today the largest research and development hub and support presence for us outside Germany,” added Kagermann.

“While the Bangalore center will continue to play a central global leadership role, we now foresee the Gurgaon center focusing on global service and support scaling up significantly in the next few years to enable us to meet our aggressive goals for India.”