SAP winning customers and market share

SAP has announced major UK customer wins in the form of Homebase and the British Council, as well as this week announcing careful alliances with Microsoft and IBM and major hardware providers.

DIY chain Homebase has rolled out mySAP Business Suite in the form of SAP for Retail and mySAP Enterprise Portal. The goals are mainly improved operations across its HQ and 278 UK stores. The implementation also involves rollout of the German giant's NetWeaver integration software.

Meanwhile the British Council, which spreads culture and the English language in 110 countries around the world through 7,000 staff, is embarking on a widespread SAP implementation, notably incorporating the vendor's campus management product, part of a higher education public sector module.

Neither user organisation revealed the cost of the technology, which is likely to be high.

Richard Phillips, British Council director Finance and Business Systems Programme, said: "People are cottoning on that this is much more than an IT project. It will change people's lives at work."

The global implementation - which includes an employee portal and front end technology to be used by students - is being enabled by working with HP and Partners For Change, as well as outsourcing partner LogicaCMG.

Phillips said the deal is about savings on systems - though the software overhaul will take place at the same time as major hardware upgrades - better efficiencies, especially in back office staffing and procurement, and increased income. About two-thirds of the organisation's revenue comes from commercial activity.

SAP claims to have won significant market share over the past year from key competitors such as Oracle and PeopleSoft in enterprise applications markets.

As well as getting closer to Microsoft for web services, SAP's annual user conference has seen announcements with IBM for the use of RFID tagging chips in retail, with RIM for the use of customer relationship management software on Blackberry mobile email devices, and extensions to relationships with Fujitsu and Sun.

Given a tie-up with Dell was announced just two weeks ago some have questioned just how far SAP can partner.

A related research note from analyst house Ovum reads: "You have to be so careful not to upset other partners that you end up with partnerships with everyone in sight - they can't all be strategic. Can they?