SAP enters the e-business arena
SAP announced its agreement with Commerce One to jointly provide open marketplace technology e-business applications and delivery capabilities in a single solution.
The marketplace suite under development is based on a common architecture to transform linear, serial supply chains into parallel, collaborative communities, including fulfillment, content services and business intelligence. The suite, yet to be named, is intended to dramatically reduce cycle times, improve customer relationships and increase productivity for businesses worldwide.
To ensure the rapid, global deployment of the marketplace suite, Commerce One, SAP and SAPMarkets will collaborate in development and sales and marketing, beginning immediately. SAP will purchase approximately $250 million worth of unregistered common stock in Commerce One and has agreed to royalty sharing between the parties over the three-year term of the agreements. Commerce One will provide the marketplace infrastructure that enables companies to establish and operate trading portals, and SAP will provide functionality in the areas of supply chain management, product life cycle management, CRM and BI.
Commerce One creates access to worldwide markets through its MarketSite Portal Solution, including the Exchange Operating System, Auction Services and Content Engine and its XML Common Business Library (xCBL). The Commerce One Global Trading Web is a business-to-business trading community comprised of many open e-marketplaces. SAP provides an open collaborative business environment of personalized solutions on demand through its Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs) and mySAP.com
Executives of the merging companies say that customers of SAP, SAPMarkets and Commerce One will enjoy a smooth transition to front-office and marketplace e-business solutions and will be able to participate immediately in the Global Trading Web. With procurement software, all companies running supported SAP enterprise software will be able to connect to the new marketplace suite without upgrading their internal systems.