SAP and NEC Tap Into Cloud Computing to Help Companies Better Run Their Businesses

TOKYO, Nov. 3, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Addressing the demands of customers to drive a strategic IT agenda, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced deeper collaboration with NEC to deliver portions of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application SAP® ERP via NEC's cloud infrastructure. NEC will provide users a comprehensive solution based on SAP ERP to help run a company's operations without the need for additional IT resources.  

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Delivered as a service, the software is managed, monitored and maintained by NEC experts in world-class, SAP-certified cloud-oriented data centers (CODCs). Companies are focusing on business growth, innovation and speed. In choosing NEC's cloud-enabled offering, company leaders and line-of-business executives will have faster deployments, outcomes and time-to-value.

Many organizations have legacy financial, procurement and accounting systems that no longer meet their needs, as companies discover when they evolve and change. The offering is designed to reduce the capital investment and operational costs of an IT-transformation based on SAP solutions while improving business agility.  

Planned features include financials, sales and distribution and materials management, to be offered via a subscription-based global cloud offering by NEC for companies headquartered in Japan in high-tech- and manufacturing-related industries. NEC is the first SAP-certified provider of cloud services in Japan, with data centers that have been recognized by SAP. With NEC, customers can simplify and automate the effort required to provision, deploy, monitor and manage SAP systems and landscapes based on NEC's best practice know-how.

"By leveraging domain-specific knowledge regarding the deployment of SAP solutions, NEC can deliver instant value to our customers who can't afford to disrupt operations for system upgrades or experiment with new technologies," said Yukihiro Fujiyoshi, senior executive vice president and member of the Board, NEC Corporation. "The combination of NEC's cloud-enabling infrastructure and SAP-deployment know-how and solutions allows customers to streamline their operations and explore new business opportunities. This solution helps customers to realize business benefits and helps ensure the health of their enterprise much more quickly, in a matter of days or weeks rather than months."

Through this partnership, customers will benefit from NEC's cloud expertise, which is tightly integrated with SAP's customer-centric approach, allowing customers to focus their resources on meeting core business challenges. The new offering, based on extensive internal expertise that NEC has gained by using the same capabilities in-house, is available to Japan-originated customers focusing on manufacturing and high-tech industries. NEC and SAP will discuss further extensions to other markets and geographies.

"Based on its best-practice know-how in deploying and operating SAP ERP 'in the cloud,' NEC is very well positioned to deliver integrated business solutions that help companies to quickly respond to changing business, market and industry requirements," said Doug Merritt, executive vice president, On-Demand Solutions, SAP. "This partnership further underscores our commitment to establishing a successful ecosystem in the area of cloud computing and thus expands our offering to the advantage of our customers."

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize the company's experience and global resources, NEC's advanced technologies meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. NEC brings more than 100 years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses and society.  For more information, visit NEC at www.nec.com.

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 105,000 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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