SAP Partners Spare Customers' Cash Flow With Hosted Solutions

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa., Jan. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SAP Americas, a subsidiary of SAP AG (NYSE: SAP), and partners CIBER, itelligence, Optimal and RunE2E today announced new licensing and delivery options for SAP ® Business All-in-One solutions. Through a subscription-based, hosted delivery model customers can deploy an easily customizable business application comprising preconfigured, industry-specific best practices without the capital outlay traditionally required for acquiring software licenses and IT hardware. The hosted offering also frees customers from the need to maintain on-premise solutions within their own IT infrastructures.

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The subscription-based hosted delivery model for SAP Business All-in-One solutions is available immediately in the U.S. market on a two-, three- or four-year contract basis from CIBER, itelligence, Optimal and RunE2E, All are participating in the SAP® Business All-in-One fast-start program and are certified by SAP to provide application management and hosting services for SAP Business All-in-One solutions.

"Being a small business focused on Hispanic cheese and dairy products we wanted to stay true to our business, but knew we could not do this without a software solution to help us better manage our operations," said Guy Paproski, president, Nuestro Queso. "We were pleased to know that we could receive industry-leading software from SAP that could be hosted by a reliable partner such as Optimal. Optimal provides the technology infrastructure and predictable cost that fits perfectly with our business model. With SAP and Optimal we will realize business benefits out of the gate, as well as down the road."

From a customer's perspective, partner offers like Optimal's FlexChoice Advantage appear identical to a software as a service (SaaS) model. For example the expenses of software, hardware, implementation and operation of the SAP software are combined into a single, fixed monthly fee. The partner will configure SAP Business All-in-One software to the customer's specifications utilizing industry-specific best practices, procure all hardware, host the hardware and run the SAP software using standard Application Management Services (AMS) offering, which includes an integrated Help Desk. Thus customers receive the best of both worlds — the world-class functionality and scalability of SAP software and the financial benefits and ease-of-adoption associated with a subscription-based pricing model.

"In these tough economic times, it's definitely not lack of need or desire slowing down SAP implementations among midsize companies," said Elliott Garofalo, senior vice president, SME Practice, Optimal Solutions. "In fact, most companies we speak with openly acknowledge an immediate need for a more efficient and reliable system to run core business processes. The problem is closely guarded capital expenditures. The Optimal FlexChoice Advantage offering enables midsize companies to implement SAP solutions today and lay the foundation for future growth without impacting their tight fiscal budgets."

With 20 years of SAP experience and 100 SAP customers in the midmarket, CIBER understands that one size and one delivery model does not fit all.

"CIBER knows the current economic situation in which many of its midsize customers struggle to get much needed investment capital to contest in a highly competitive market place," said Sam Wood, vice president, CIBER. "We appreciate SAP working with us to provide the subscription-based offering that will provide our joint customers options, allowing them to provide a comprehensive, transparent overview over their entire operations to stay competitive."

By demonstrating clear understanding of the business needs of midsize companies across diverse, rapidly changing industries, itelligence practices effective collaboration with customers to fulfill their most critical business goals.

"As a partner in the SAP Business All-in-One fast-start program, itelligence strongly believes in offering customers practical, customizable and rapid go-to-market options," said Steve Niesman, U.S. president and CEO, itelligence. "We are excited to offer customers this new structure to flexibly and affordably license and deploy world-class SAP solutions for critical business applications, and we look forward to providing customers with world-class knowledge and support to successfully achieve their unique objectives."

RunE2E is a market leader in SAP solutions for customer relationship management (CRM) for small and midsize businesses. The company's SAP-certified solution, RunCRM, can be quickly and cost-effectively deployed to help customers achieve rapid return on investment (ROI) through sales, marketing and service optimization.

"Offering the flexibility to fund CRM through operational budgets on a subscription basis meets a critical requirement for many businesses in today's marketplace," said Mark Alexander, CEO, RunE2E. "The combination of our powerful CRM solution and flexible deployment and pricing options significantly strengthens our value proposition for small and midsize businesses."

"The addition of a subscription-based hosting option to the product portfolio of SAP Business All-in-One solutions provides customers with even more choices to find the right solutions for their individual business needs and preferences," said Tom Cooper, senior vice president, SME United States, SAP North America. "Our proven industry partners CIBER, itelligence, Optimal and RunE2E possess in-depth market knowledge that will help to make this expansion of the fast-start program a success to the benefit of our joint customers. With the subscription-based hosted delivery model, we further increase the value of our entire solution portfolio for small and midsize enterprises by providing options not only in functionality, operating system and databases, but also in deployment and licensing."

Due to the success of hosting offerings for SAP Business All-in-One in general (see "Hosted SAP® Solutions from Channel Partners Free Midsize Companies from Day-to-Day IT Challenges"), the subscription-based hosting option for SAP Business All-in-One offers customers the powerful functionality of the flagship enterprise resource planning (ERP) application, SAP® ERP; industry-specific SAP® Best Practices packages; the SAP® MaxDB™ database; standard SAP® Enterprise Support services; and application hosting, management and maintenance. In addition, customers can optionally choose CRM for SAP Business All-in-One and payroll processing software from SAP. Customers maintain the flexibility to configure their solutions to fit their business needs and the choice to move at a later time to an on-premise deployment model.

Customers interested in buying perpetual SAP Business All-in-One licenses can evaluate the solution and receive costs estimates through the innovative solution configurator for SAP Business All-in-One solutions — an online tool for midsize companies to easily configure SAP Business All-in-One solutions targeted to their particular needs. In addition to evaluating an ERP solution, the solution configurator can configure CRM functionality. In four easy steps, a company can input its industry-specific ERP and CRM needs, resulting in a solution blueprint and cost estimate that includes costs for software licenses, implementation services and hardware components optimized to run SAP Business All-in-One. SAP partners that participate in the fast-start program can take part by offering their own solution configurator to showcase their best practices-based SAP solutions (see "Expansion of Midmarket Program Provides Greater Cost Transparency and Shorter Project Cycles").

About SAP® Business All-in-One

SAP® Business All-in-One solutions are comprehensive and flexible business management software with built-in support for industry best practices. The solutions best fit the needs of midsize companies looking for a comprehensive, integrated industry solution to power their business end-to-end. In one configurable solution, SAP Business All-in-One helps companies manage everything from financials, human resources, procurement, inventory, manufacturing, logistics, product development and corporate services, to customer service, sales and marketing. SAP Business All-in-One solutions are available from a wide network of qualified partners that deliver more than 700 industry-specific solutions in 50 countries. SAP provides all the deployment tools and methodologies that partners need to deliver fast, predictable implementation with low risk, low cost and rapid time to value. Additional information is available at www.sap.com/businessallinone.

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 92,000 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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