Market momentum: SAP surpasses 10,000 customers running latest ERP release
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 7/3/2008 12:00:00 AM
SAP reports a landmark in product strategy: The latest release of SAP ERP has been selected or installed by more than 10,000 customers, including Bank of America, Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem, and Kraft Foods. In addition, Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner now ranks SAP as the 2007 Market Share leader in the ERP category with a market share of 27.5 percent.
As SAP ERP gains industrywide momentum, it has emerged as the No. 1 topic of interest for the Americas' SAP Users' Group (ASUG), according to Chris Crone, director of business technology for Golden Valley, Minn.-based Pentair Corp., and member of the ASUG Board of Directors.
"To keep pace with this demand, we created the ASUG SAP ERP Upgrades Program in 2007," says Crone. "Robust attendance at our face-to-face symposiums and Webcasts—in addition to the high volume of traffic on our online Upgrades Information Center—is proof that SAP ERP 6.0 is the IT enabler of choice for companies seeking to gain a competitive edge."
The 10,000-customer milestone comes in the wake of general availability of the software's third enhancement package, a unique model in the software sector that enables customers to continuously add on new software features at no additional charge and without having to undergo complete upgrades.
"SAP has made a considerable investment in simplifying the upgrade process," says Ray Wang, principal analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, in a May 2008 report titled Enhancement Packages Improve SAP Upgrade Value. "New functionality, progression to service-oriented architecture, and enhancement packages provide significant incentives to upgrade to SAP ERP 6.0."
Now available to SAP ERP 6.0 customers, the third enhancement package delivers 150 new business functions that include 400 new capabilities, 183 industry enhancements, 45 enterprise service bundles, and 556 individual enterprise services. Key business functions include new capabilities in the areas of general ledger, hedge management support, recruiting, and unit maintenance for defense.
