SAP and China Telecom Expand Strategic Partnership to Provide SAP® Cloud Portfolio to Customers and Partners in China

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Nov 20, 2013, 01:30 ET

BEIJING, Nov. 20, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and China Telecom today announced a strategic partnership in cloud computing through which the SAP® Cloud portfolio will be offered to small and large organizations in China by China Datacom Corporation Limited (CDC), a joint venture between SAP and China Communication Services (CCS), a subsidiary of China Telecom Group. CCS will be the first local customer to adopt the industry-leading offerings. The announcement was made at China SAPPHIRE, being held November 20-21 in Beijing.

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The cooperation marks another development in the partnership that SAP and China Telecom began in 2011 and will expand on the current work the companies have done to promote mobile development and device management. With the inclusion of cloud solutions from SAP, the companies will move from basic cooperation such as Internet Data Center (IDC) to a partnership on cloud offerings and application services.

The first solutions to be made available through the partnership and hosted in a China Telecom IDC will be the complete, state-of-the-art suite of human capital management (HCM) solutions from SuccessFactors, an SAP company, making SAP the first international software vendor to deliver an integrated cloud HCM offering in China. SuccessFactors provides an integrated, collaborative HCM suites in the cloud that helps manage the entire employee life cycle — from recruit to retire. CCS will be the first customer to subscribe to the SuccessFactors solution hosted in a China data center and expects to have 12,000 users.

"Through the cooperation with China Telecom and CCS, we are now able to provide world-class cloud solutions from SAP to our customers in China, from a data center in China," said Bill McDermott, co-CEO, SAP AG. "This is a significant milestone in our 'Innovation in China for China' strategy and our long-term commitment to the Chinese market. As a leading cloud company, SAP helps customers in China address concerns for secure data management in the cloud and receive an unparalleled cloud experience. We will continue to expand our ecosystem and will bring even more innovative cloud solutions to China to help provide local enterprises with remarkable business value, radical simplification of their IT landscapes and tremendous competitive advantages."

"Telecom operators are promoters of collaboration, providers of resources and integrators of capabilities in the cloud industry chain, while leading cloud product and service providers like SAP are the starting point of this chain. The win-win cooperation between China Telecom and SAP allows us not only to leverage each other's best resources, but also marks an innovation in business model and technology application. I believe the cooperation will speed up Chinese enterprises' cloud implementation process," said Mr. Yang Jie, president of China Telecom. "Currently, China Telecom has two major cloud bases in Inner-Mongolia and Guizhou Province, four data centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu, as well as the end-to-end data capability covering Asia, Europe, America, Africa and Oceania. China Telecom's high-quality and reliable cloud infrastructure and IaaS service will help ensure that the value of cloud solutions from SAP is fully demonstrated, which will support more Chinese enterprises in their technical transformation and business innovation with the market-leading, end-to-end cloud service."

"We, CCS, are very delighted to play the unique bonding role in this value chain. We have converged the leading cloud infrastructure, cloud products and technologies, cloud service expertise and customer bases from multiple parties, and thus provide advanced cloud services to governments and enterprises," said Mr. Li Ping, chairman of the Board of CCS. "CCS will also adopt the SuccessFactors solution, which clearly demonstrates our confidence in this product and model. I believe our cooperation with SAP will continue to deepen and expand."

"Cloud is a technology that drives business innovation and agility. It is also of great importance for Chinese government and enterprises. China is on its way to becoming a stronghold for cloud computing technology development," said Mark Gibbs, president of SAP Greater China. "Today, the notion that the key to cloud computing development is cloud applications has been widely recognized. By establishing partnerships with local enterprises, SAP has been bringing market-leading cloud applications to China, offering customers a larger variety of product options and boosting the entire market. We believe cloud applications can help Chinese enterprises flexibly and promptly respond to market changes, achieving greater business value with a lower total cost of ownership."

"SAP's cloud strategy to provide local and multinational corporations in China with its cloud portfolio is bound to have a significant impact on China's enterprise cloud market. SAP has always been strong at delivering enterprise applications on premise. With its increasing shift from on premise to on demand, this move into the SaaS space gives SAP the potential to become a heavyweight in the SaaS market in China. It provides a technology road map for large enterprises to build private cloud. Meanwhile, the local cloud center that SAP and its ecosystem of partners build together will trigger many opportunities for SMEs as they now have direct access to the SAP Cloud portfolio," said Dr. He Jian Ying, vice president, CCID Consulting. "After nearly three years of market cultivation, China's cloud computing market has moved from a speculative concept to becoming a real business opportunity. The cloud-based applications market in China is expected to grow at 34.6 percent and exceed CNY80 billion by the end of 2013."

The SAP Cloud portfolio provides the innovation and agility businesses need to rapidly adapt their processes to capitalize on ever-changing market dynamics and includes:

The industry's largest base of cloud users, at more than 33 million
The most comprehensive suite of cloud applications, covering all lines of business — from customer to supplier and everything in between
The leading social business platform, with more than 10 million users
The world's largest business network, with more than 1 million connected companies transacting more than US$500 billion in commerce on an annual basis
Market-leading public, private and managed cloud offerings, including public cloud applications ranked No. 1 in HCM, procurement, business networks and social collaboration
The world's most advanced cloud platform

When taken together with the connectivity and insight of SAP social and business networks, the power and speed of the in-memory SAP HANA® database and analytics, as well as the accessibility of SAP mobile solutions, the SAP Cloud portfolio empowers a new level of business performance.

To learn more about cloud solutions from SAP, visit www.sap.com/cloud. For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom.

About SAP

As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 251,000 customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

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