BEIJING, Nov. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced multi-year spending plans of more than US$2 billion through 2015 to grow its business in China. The company intends to deepen its investment in this key global market in order to further underscore its long-term strategic commitment to the world's second-largest economy. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE® NOW + SAP® TechEd, being held as a co-located event in Beijing from November 15-17.
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"We have successfully grown our business in China over the past 20 years and now want to scale our operations to fully meet the needs of both enterprises and our ecosystem," said Bill McDermott, co-CEO, SAP AG. "Our SAP Labs and SAP Research facilities there will continue to drive innovation for our Chinese customer base. We will also create more research and development facilities, hire thousands of people, train more experts and consultants and bring our world-class benchmarking methodology to China — all aimed at helping drive sustainable growth through informatization."
To position its business for continued growth in China, SAP expects its spending and investment to occur in the following key dimensions:
- Creating Solutions: Innovating for the benefit of customers will further drive alignment between SAP and Sybase in China. SAP Labs in China will be the primary innovation center for the development of new solutions tailored to meet country requirements.
- Delivering Solutions: Growing the business in China will require a significant increase in market presence. To bring services and support closer to its customers, SAP aims to hire approximately 2,000 people through 2015, open five to six new offices across the country and scale all support functions appropriately.
- Supporting Solutions: Investing in the services and support functions that deliver value and drive co-innovation are critical to meeting growth objectives. The SAP® Active Global Support (SAP AGS) organization has already taken steps to specifically address the needs of companies operating in the Chinese market (see "China Draws Maximum Attention as Support Stronghold, Innovation Springboard for SAP"). SAP will scale SAP AGS and the SAP Services organization to support growth.
- Growing the IT Ecosystem: SAP's success stems from the ability to nurture, educate and grow an ecosystem to meet customer needs, particularly in the small and midsize (SME) market. Building mutually beneficial relationships with both traditional and non-traditional partners — from systems integrators to banks and telecommunications companies — will support SAP in exponentially expanding its reach.