SAP announced a historic landmark in its product release strategy: The latest release of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) application, SAP ERP, has been selected or installed by more than 10,000 customers, including Bank of America, Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem, and Kraft Foods. In addition, independent analyst firm Gartner recently ranked SAP as the 2007 Market Share leader in the ERP category with a market share of 27.5 percent, surpassing the second-ranked vendor who was ranked at 13.9 percent.1

As SAP ERP continues to gain industry-wide momentum, it has also become the No. 1 topic of interest for the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG), according to Chris Crone, director of Business Technology, Pentair Corporation and member of the ASUG Board of Directors.

“To keep pace with this demand, we created the ASUG SAP ERP Upgrades Program in 2007,” said Crone. “Robust attendance at our face-to-face symposiums and Webcasts, in addition to the high volume of traffic on our online Upgrades Information Center, is proof that SAP ERP 6.0 is the IT enabler of choice for companies seeking to gain a competitive edge.”

Available since June 2006, SAP ERP 6.0 is the fastest adopted ERP release in SAP history and is the first step in enabling customers to take full advantage of the entire SAP Business Suite family of business applications. The 10,000-customer milestone comes in the wake of general availability of the software’s third enhancement package, a model in the software sector that enables customers to continuously add on new software features at no additional charge and without having to undergo complete upgrades.

“SAP has made a considerable investment in simplifying the upgrade process,” wrote Ray Wang, principal analyst, Forrester Research, in the May 2008 report titled “Enhancement Packages Improve SAP Upgrade Value.” “New functionality, progression to service-oriented architecture and enhancement packages provide significant incentives to upgrade to SAP ERP 6.0.”

Now available to SAP ERP 6.0 customers, the third enhancement package delivers 150 new business functions that include 400 new capabilities, 183 industry enhancements, 45 enterprise service bundles and 556 individual enterprise services—the essential building blocks of software applications that can be reused and combined to compose new business processes. Key business functions include new capabilities in the areas of general ledger, hedge management support, recruiting and unit maintenance for defense.

Since the release of SAP ERP in 2006, SAP has delivered more than 600 new capabilities and 97 enterprise service bundles to customers. Built upon the SAP NetWeaver technology platform, SAP ERP enables customers to take advantage of an enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA) strategy. SAP NetWeaver coupled with leading end-to-end business processes from SAP provide a consolidated IT landscape, outfitted with the best tools to enable innovation and ultimately lead to differentiation and a competitive edge for businesses.

“The industry-at-large continues to express their appreciation for the flexibility that SAP ERP 6.0 offers and the simplicity of enhancement packages,” said Jim Hagemann Snabe, member of the Executive Board, SAP AG. “By providing an innovative business process platform and flexible product release strategy, we continue to empower our customers to evolve in the face of challenging market conditions, modernize their operations and business models, and drive top- and bottom-line growth.”

1 Source: Gartner Inc., “Market Share: ERP Software, Worldwide, 2007;” Chris Pang, Chad Eschinger, Yanna Dharmasthira and Koji Motoyoshi; June 2008.