SAP and Sybase Reach Key Milestones in Mobility and On-Demand Plans

DUBLIN, Calif. and WALLDORF, Germany, Oct. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In line with SAP's strategic growth plan, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and Sybase, an SAP company, today announced two key milestones in a continued effort to lead the mobility and on-demand markets. These changes include the creation of a new Mobile Business Unit, designed to deliver innovation more rapidly across the SAP and Sybase portfolios. It also includes an approach of joint leadership and aligned resources within SAP across development and go-to-market to further drive the business across all on-demand applications.

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Sybase to Drive SAP Mobility Efforts With New Mobile Business Unit

To accelerate the mobilization of SAP® solutions, SAP has created a new Mobile Business Unit, comprised of both SAP and Sybase employees, under the leadership of John Chen, chairman and CEO of Sybase, who will lead SAP's overarching mobility strategy and business. The new Mobile Business Unit will be responsible for helping customers unwire their enterprises by developing the world's best mobile business applications, accelerating the mobilization of SAP solutions to all devices via a new software development kit (SDK), and delivering a single mobile development and deployment platform to provide customers easy access to all applications and data (SAP and non-SAP) securely across all devices.

To ensure the success of mobile applications, the SAP Executive Board has appointed Bob Stutz, SAP corporate officer and executive vice president, as general manager of the Mobile Applications Group, reporting to Chen. In this new role, Stutz will oversee the direction and development of packaged native mobile applications across SAP and Sybase. In addition, Stutz’s team will simplify and accelerate the innovation of mobile experiences within SAP and within the SAP ecosystem, leveraging the best infrastructure and tools in the market, and developing complementary mobile solutions that deliver fast time to value for customers.

Also reporting to Chen are Billy Ho, Sybase senior vice president of product and technology operations, as well as Marty Beard, president of Sybase 365. Ho will oversee SAP and Sybase teams of the Mobile Business Unit in the development of the single mobile platform leveraging the integration of SAP and Sybase technologies, along with the creation of the SDK. The platform and SDK are both scheduled for delivery to customers in 2011. Beard is leading the mobile services team.

"With Sybase as the mobile arm of SAP, we're best positioned to capitalize on one of the most important trends in the industry to deliver the full value of business processes anywhere and on any device," said Chen. "Bob Stutz has significant experience in developing enterprise applications, and I am confident that under his leadership we will continue to lead the way in technology innovation and market share."

Dedicated Team Focuses on Innovation and Delivery of On-Demand Applications

With the successful launch of feature pack 2.5 for the SAP® Business ByDesign™ solution in July 2010, SAP reached an important milestone in its road map in delivering one of the most modern and integrated on-demand solutions. Based on growing adoption of the on-demand solution along with positive feedback from customers, partners and industry influencers, SAP is further strengthening its efforts in the overall on-demand business by using SAP Business ByDesign not only as the platform for partners to create industry-specific solutions, but also as the platform for its own line-of-business offerings for large enterprises. With this move, SAP will combine two key areas of innovation and put even greater focus on fulfilling the varying business demands of customers of all sizes. This advancement is planned to be available in 2011 with the next version, feature pack 2.6 for SAP Business ByDesign. The solution will, for example, serve as the platform for the SAP® Sales OnDemand solution, which will support SAP customers in managing their customer relationships and sales cycles on demand with seamless integration with their on-premise enterprise resource planning (ERP) core.

To support this effort, SAP announced joint leadership and aligned resources across development and go-to-market to further drive the business across all on-demand applications. Under this setup, Peter Lorenz, SAP corporate officer and executive vice president, will lead a dedicated development unit responsible for all on-demand applications. Doug Merritt, executive vice president of on-demand solutions, will lead all global go-to-market efforts across the on-demand portfolio in close collaboration with regional teams as well as the SAP ecosystem. Jointly, Lorenz and Merritt will be responsible for taking innovation to the market faster to support customers' growth strategies.

“SAP is focused on enabling our customers to run their businesses better by delivering software — whether on premise, on demand or on device — that is both open and consistent across all deployment options. The moves we’re making today mark yet another key milestone in the execution of this strategy and further accelerates our ability to bring world-class solutions to our customers around the globe,” said SAP Co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe.

About Sybase

Sybase, an SAP company, is the industry leader in delivering enterprise and mobile software to manage, analyze and mobilize information. We are recognized globally as a performance leader, proven in the most data-intensive industries and across all major systems, networks and devices. Our information management, analytics and enterprise mobility solutions have powered the world's most mission-critical systems in financial services, telecommunications, manufacturing and government. For more information, visit http://www.sybase.com. Read Sybase blogs: http://blogs.sybase.com. Follow us on Twitter at @Sybase.

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 102,500 customers in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol "SAP." For more information, visit www.sap.com.

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, and related applications.

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