BANGALORE, INDIA (09/25/2000) - SAP AG is planning to outsource the maintenance of its application software to Indian companies, according to a company executive.
"We are evaluating the opportunity for outsourcing some of our maintenance work, if we can ensure our control over it," Peter Zencke, executive board member of SAP, told IDG News Service. The maintenance of the software will include not only bug fixing but also ensuring that new features and components introduced by SAP integrate with earlier releases of R/3, SAP's enterprise resource planning software.
"Once we have certain application areas where somebody else does the maintenance, that maintenance will also include customer support," added Zencke.
SAP is already working with Bangalore-based software company Infosys Technologies Ltd. on software development, though this relationship is currently limited to Infosys providing software engineers to SAP's labs at Palo Alto on a "time and materials" basis.
SAP's development subsidiary in Bangalore, SAP Labs India, which started off with the customization of SAP applications to meet country- and industry-specific needs, is currently also involved in the development of new functionality for the customer relationship management (CRM) and Workplace applications in mySAP.com.
"It was our goal, and we have achieved it, that our development lab in Bangalore should become an integrated part of the overall SAP lab organization," said Zencke. "The mobile environment of CRM is coming out of this lab, as also some specific collaborative dealer management scenarios, specially for the high-tech industry."
Walldorf-based SAP has been progressively changing its business model from doing everything in-house to both outsourcing software development and partnering software vendors. "We would like to work on plug-in solutions, even if we have to cooperate with other software vendors," Zencke said. To ensure better control on deliverables by both partners, these partnerships will not be marketing relationships alone but also will involve joint engineering. "It is not that we can partner and start a joint sales campaign," explained Zencke. "It needs engineering work, and it needs a long-term commitment from both sides to make it stable."
SAP AG in Walldorf, Germany can be reached at +49-6227-74-3242 or http://www.sap.com/.