SAP to Deliver More and Accelerated Innovation Without Disruption to SAP® Business Suite

WALLDORF, Germany, Oct. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the accelerated delivery of business innovations for SAP® Business Suite software along a clear road map. SAP will introduce the software enhancements without disruption on a quarterly schedule in areas where customers can benefit most, including mobility, in-memory computing technology and cloud computing. Customers will be able to determine the speed of innovation based on their needs — without major upgrade efforts. Specific details regarding incremental enhancement capabilities will be provided at the upcoming SAPPHIRE® NOW + SAP® TechEd 2011 events in Madrid, being held November 8-10.

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Traditional, large-scale upgrades can impact the entire enterprise and hamper productivity. In contrast, SAP plans to make evolutionary and breakthrough innovations available in a non-disruptive fashion on a quarterly schedule for the product and solution landscapes that customers have today. The key concept of evolutionary innovation is the delivery of incremental enhancements to capabilities of the core suite of SAP software products. This will keep customers on the cutting edge in running their business. These enhancements will include state-of-the-art user experiences such as side panels, landing pages or process extensions to mobile devices. Business analytics connected to business transactions are also planned in order to help customers make better decisions and execute them faster. Additionally, breakthrough technology innovations like in-memory computing will drastically change the user experience in business processes involving large data volumes.

As a logical consequence of this approach, SAP will extend mainstream maintenance for the core SAP Business Suite 7 applications, including the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application SAP® ERP 6.0, by five years, from December 2015 through December 2020. This gives SAP customers long-term predictability and removes the burden of upgrades across the enterprise for several years. The longer maintenance also applies to the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform, as the basis of the core application releases, and for all current SAP enhancement packages for SAP Business Suite. The 2012 release strategy brochure will reflect the above decisions.

"Our innovation strategy and the resulting maintenance timelines will give customers predictability of their SAP projects and accelerate the adoption of new innovations from SAP," said Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-CEO, SAP. "This helps them to become more productive, free up resources and run their businesses even better. This speed of innovation combined with the long-term predictability is unparalleled in the software industry and demonstrates our commitment to enduring, mutually beneficial customer partnerships."

For more information, watch a video featuring SAP executives Peter Maier and Bernd Leukert, "SAP Business Suite Innovation Road Map," and visit the Industries and Solutions 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 172,000 customers (includes customers from the acquisition of Sybase) to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

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SOURCE SAP AG