SAP abandons single-vendor policy

SAP has broken with its single-vendor tradition by announcing an extensive partner programme and expanding its integration of non-SAP products, even where an SAP alternative is available.

The strategy is to have users implement the mySAP.com portal and snap in all the necessary applications either from SAP or from a list of 1,000 approved partners.

"We will develop all we can ourselves," explained CEO Hasso Plattner. "But where we can't, we will take care of the integration."

Henning Kagermann, co-founder of the company, added: "This is a suite of ebusiness applications and it's not monolithic."

SAP claims to have 500 customers using mySAP.com. Other than the company's flagship R/3 product, the most popular installations so far are the portal itself, the business warehouse and the supply chain management modules. CRM has been the least popular.

Plattner admitted that SAP's CRM offering was late in coming, but said SAP engineering made it worth the wait.

Dale Vile, senior analyst with Bloor Research, said that SAP's move towards partnering is good news for customers who no longer have to wait for the company to build the product.

"SAP has broken their religion that says, if we don't build it, we won't sell it," he said. "This is a company with deeply ingrained values; it's very engineering-driven. When an SAP product ships, it has been bullet-proofed. But that's a problem as they try to broaden out on the Internet. They've got huge inertia and cultural problems."