SAP PartnerEdge

SAP solutions for small businesses and midsize companies are delivered through its global partner network. In 2008, SAP signed SAP Global Service partnership with HCL Technologies, a $4.9 b technology service provider, headquartered in India.. The SAP PartnerEdge program, SAP's partner program, offers a set of business enablement resources and program benefits to help partners including value added resellers (VARs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) be profitable and successful in implementing, selling, marketing, developing and delivering SAP solutions to a broad range of customers.

Gartner states that SAP PartnerEdge has "set a new standard for innovation in channel development for the small and midsize business application market."

Communities

SAP Developer Network (SDN) is a community of developers, consultants, integrators, and business analysts gaining and sharing knowledge about ABAP, Java, .NET, SOA, and other technologies via expert blogs, discussion forums, exclusive downloads and code samples, training materials, and a technical library. The Business Process Expert (BPX) Community is a collaborative environment for business process experts to share information, experiences and best practices to leverage enterprise SOA in order to increase business agility and IT value. The SAP Enterprise Services Community serves as a platform for members from customers, industry experts and partners working collaboratively to define enterprise services. Industry Value Networks (IVN) bring together customers, partners and SAP to co-innovate and develop solutions to solve industry-specific customer challenges. There are currently eleven active IVNs (e.g. Banking, Chemicals, Consumer Products, High Tech, Public Sector, Retail).

Organization

Functional units of SAP are split across different organizational units for R&D needs, field activities and customer support. SAP Labs are mainly responsible for product development where as the field organizations spread across each country are responsible for field activities such Sales, Marketing, Consulting etc. Head office located in SAP AG is responsible for overall management as well as core Engineering activities related to Product Development. SAP customer support, also called Active Global Support (AGS) is a global organization to provide support to SAP customers worldwide.

SAP Labs Centers

SAP Labs is the research and development organization of the parent company. SAP has its development organization spread across the globe. Many, but not all, labs locations are hosting SAP ResearKch groups.

Prominent labs are located in Europe (SAP Lab - Bulgaria) São Leopoldo, Brazil; Palo Alto, USA; Bangalore,and Gurgaon India; Ra'anana and Karmiel, Israel; Montreal and Vancouver, Canada and Shanghai, China. SAP Labs India is the largest development unit in terms of number of employees outside the SAP headquarters located in Walldorf, Germany. Other SAP Labs locations include France, Bulgaria and Hungary.

Each SAP Lab has prominent area of expertise and focus. SAP Labs in Sofia, Bulgaria for example specializes in development of Java based SAP software products. Whereas, SAP Labs in U.S. is famous for its focus on innovation and research.