SAP® Business Suite 7 Now Available to Customers Worldwide

WALLDORF, Germany - May 05, 2009 - Delivering on its commitment made to customers earlier this year (see, “SAP Helps Customers Respond Quickly to Economic Downturn With Introduction of New Modular Business Suite”), SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced SAP® Business Suite 7, the company’s next-generation software suite enabled by service-oriented architecture (SOA), is now generally available to customers worldwide. Following a successful ramp-up period, large enterprises across all industries can now achieve process excellence through the modular deployment of industry-specific end-to-end processes that cut across application boundaries; ease upgrades and reduce IT costs with SAP enhancement packages; and capture growth opportunities through insight gained from analytics tools embedded within SAP Business Suite 7.

More than 300 customers in all major industries across 37 countries participated in the six-month ramp-up program for SAP Business Suite 7, designed to help customers achieve business value from SAP solutions and communicate their experiences to SAP development experts. Due to the high quality solutions and success of the ramp-up program, several customers are already live and productively using the new SAP Business Suite.

Customer Feedback Showcases Insight, Efficiency and Flexibility of the New Suite
Customers of all sizes and from all industries, such as Centerpoint Energy, Centrica British Gas, Colgate-Palmolive, Dow Corning, Emil Löffelhardt, Exxaro, Hindustan Unilever Limited, IBM, Natural Oil & Gas, Northern Kentucky University and Roche, were key to the success of the SAP Business Suite 7 ramp-up phase by implementing, testing and providing feedback on its key attributes.

“We’re very excited about not just the tremendous work we’ve already done, but also about the opportunities that the new SAP Business Suite will deliver, which will pay even more dividends as we move ahead,” says Tim Ferguson, CIO, Northern Kentucky University.

Today, Dow Corning provides performance-enhancing solutions to serve the diverse needs of more than 25,000 customers worldwide. Based in Michigan, Dow Corning is a global leader in silicon-based technology and innovation, offering more than 7,000 products and services.

“As a long-time customer we have worked closely with SAP over the years to address our industry-specific business issues,” said Abbe Mulders, CIO, Dow Corning. “The business objectives that we set for our SAP Business Suite 7 implementation have already been met, including better visibility into manufacturing processes, increasing overall productivity and improving customer response times.”

Since early 2009, German real estate management company Strabag Property & Facility Services GmbH (Strabag PFS) has been using SAP Business Suite 7 and has already benefited from using SAP enhancement packages.

“Our biggest challenge is adapting standard processes to the needs of our customers and supplying up-to-date information—say, about unused space—promptly when it is wanted,” said Wolfgang Hohmann, senior SAP consultant with Strabag PFS. “The innovation delivered by the enhancement package eliminated the need for an entire upgrade. We were able to pick and choose the functional innovations we needed and import them quickly and simply.”

New Functional Capabilities to Address a New Reality
The modular, reduced-risk IT approach of the new SAP Business Suite not only helps companies remain competitive in turbulent economic times, but also positions them to quickly capture profitable business opportunities during the economic recovery. For instance, to support companies with their business, the new SAP Business Suite delivers more than 150 functional innovations to better address customer business requirements, including new process collaboration and shared service capabilities, enabling customers to manage complex financial and supply chain processes more easily.

To further support customers in reducing the total cost of ownership, SAP devised a synchronized release schedule for all core SAP Business Suite 7 applications—SAP® ERP, SAP® Customer Relationship Management, SAP® Supplier Relationship Management, SAP® Supply Chain Management and SAP® Product Lifecycle Management—designed to meet the specific business requirements of all industries.

Other key capabilities of the new SAP Business Suite include:

Enhancement packages will help customers reduce cost and complexity by delivering future innovations in a minimally-disruptive fashion. Enhancement packages allow customers to select and deploy only the functionality they need without upgrading their solution—leaving long implementations, upgrades and disintegrated point solutions in the past.
Value Scenarios focus on solving industry-specific business issues with end-to-end processes that span across lines of business and application boundaries. Value scenarios can be implemented in a step-wise fashion and deployed as customers need them. To further accelerate implementation, SAP Consulting offers implementation services to help speed the success of SAP Business Suite projects.
Expanded industry-specific footprint addresses critical business requirements, across all industries, including enhanced supply chain and warehousing processes for trading, logistics and manufacturing industries; improved customer lifecycle management solutions for service and trading industries; investigative case management, tax and revenue management and other service processes for public sector organizations; and advanced metering infrastructure integration and deregulation compliance solutions for the utility industry.
Harmonized user interfaces provide a more simplified and consistent user experience when implementing a process that spans across multiple applications
Embedded analytics tools help customers take action on insights gained across demand, production, inventory, sales and supplier activities across their extended business networks
Improved software lifecycle management through integration with the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform and the new SAP Business Suite can reduce landscape complexity by consolidating instances and transferring transactional data from retired systems to SAP Business Suite.
2,800 enterprise services enable the flexible, modular development of differentiating one’s own practices.
Solution manager allows SAP administrators to implement content changes to SAP Business Suite applications, which reduces downtime, accelerates implementations and reduces the total cost of ownership of the IT landscape

“The general availability of the new SAP Business Suite marks the arrival of a clear path forward for companies that struggle with the high cost and complexity created by disparate applications and middleware solutions,” said Jim Hagemann Snabe, member of the SAP Executive Board. “With the new SAP Business Suite, we continue to deliver on our promise to provide customers with market-leading services and solutions that deliver extraordinary value in today’s business environment.”

For more information, visit the SAP Business Suite Newsroom on sap.com

Next Major Event: SAPPHIRE® 2009 Orlando
More than 10,000 customers, partners and industry experts are convening at SAPPHIRE® 2009 to discover how SAP and its thriving partner ecosystem are delivering IT solutions that help today’s best-run businesses achieve clarity in every area of their operations. SAP’s premier educational and networking event, SAPPHIRE is the one occasion each year where senior executives, business managers and decision-makers can come together to explore how innovative business solutions foster long-term, profitable growth. SAPPHIRE 2009 will be held in Orlando, Florida, May 11-14. For more information, please visit www.sap.com/sapphire. Join the conversation via Twitter at #sapphire09.

In addition to SAPPHIRE 2009, SAP is also hosting SAP® World Tour 2009, a series of local events in more than 70 cities through Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. For more information, visit the SAP World Tour event page on sap.com.

About SAP® Business Suite
SAP® Business Suite software enables enterprises to execute and optimize their business and IT strategies. SAP Business Suite gives organizations the unique ability to perform their essential industry-specific and business support processes with modular software that is designed to work with other SAP and non-SAP software. Organizations and departments in all industries can deploy SAP Business Suite software in a step-wise manner to address specific business challenges on their own timelines and without costly upgrades. SAP Business Suite provides better insight and visibility across organizations, improves operational efficiency and effectiveness, and increases the flexibility to address business change.

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 86,000 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.