SAP, the largest vendor of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and related enterprise applications is set to unleash a $2.4billion investment towards building cloud services.
The company’s ERP system enables its customers to run their business processes, including accounting, sales, production, human resources and finance, in an integrated environment.
SAP is the acronym for Systems, Applications, Products, which is a converged e-commerce platform that provides users with real-time business applications that contain a user interface and is considered extremely flexible. The Zimbabwean government is the major end user of this system for its various e-governance processes.
SAP is implemented by Third Century Systems Pvt Ltd across Zimbabwe and other African countries. As its products continue to surge in the market, SAP is now focusing more financial resources through the $2.4billion investment to expand its capacity through cloud services systems.
SAP provides integrated business management solutions for many governments and other corporate organizations across the globe.
To speed up the delivering of its solutions via cloud services, SAP has agreed to buy Callidus Software for about US$2.4bn to bolster a cloud-based business that grew strongly in the fourth quarter. Buying Callidus was a strategic move for the enterprise solutions giant because the latter is considered globally as the most innovate cloud solutions service providers in recent years.
The integration ensures that information flows from one SAP component to another without the need for redundant data entry and helps enforce financial, process and legal controls. It also facilitates the effective use of resources, including manpower, machines and production capacities.
According to its 2016 corporate fact sheet, SAP serves more than 335,000 customers in 190 countries, of which 80% are small- and-medium sized businesses (SMB). The latter fact is a more recent departure from the company’s previous focus on large enterprise organizations.
It’s estimated that 75% of all global business transactions come in contact with an SAP system. The company offers on-premises, cloud and hybrid deployment models, with cloud computing options being the focus for the company’s future.
On the Forbes 2016 list of “The World’s Biggest Public Companies,” SAP was ranked the third-largest software and programming company, behind Microsoft (1) and Oracle (2) and is currently headquartered in Walldorf, Germany.
