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Innovation and the rapidly growing significance of business networks are putting new requirements on business applications and architectures. At the SAP TechEd '07 in Bangalore, India, the Germany-based business software maker's message was loud and clear: "Harness the power and flexibility of enterprise SOA to help transform existing business processes". The event being held Nov 28-30, at the KTPO's Trade Center in Bangalore saw participation from over 3000 customers and partners of the company.

"Our enterprise SOA strategy is enabling customers and partners to achieve business process standardization and innovation at the same time to harness the power of their business networks using a single, integrated business process platform," said Claus E. Heinrich, Member of the SAP Executive Board. SAP, IBM, and Oracle are competing with each other in terms of providing pre-packaged business processes that are tied to integration scenarios over specific verticals. While SAP has been working on packaged application integration for quite some time now, IBM has been busily developing the technology this past year; however, Oracle with its Application Integration Architecture (AIA) is pushing hard to become the leader of the pack.

In India, SAP has seen a significant growth in its network in 2007, with the numbers of its customers and partners more than doubling their membership and activities within SAP communities in the year. "The SAP Developer Network (SDN) and Business Process Expert Communities have grown to around 200,000 members in 2007. This marks an almost 100 per cent increase in overall membership across the country," said key SAP executives. SAP also claimed strong traction online, with weekly page views on community sites being pegged at the one million figure.

When quizzed on SAP's main challenges and opportunities In India, Kush Desai, who was recently promoted from CFO to MD for SAP Labs India, noted the following as top on his priority list:

• How to provide good services
• Thought leadership
• More ownership to employees
• Retaining employees and attracting new talent
• Outstrip the competition, if given a good environment for growth

Founded in November 1998, SAP India has two centers - Bangalore and Gurgaon, with an employee base of nearly 4000. The Indian entity is the largest location for SRM development, while one-third of global development for xAppa and Duet are done in India. One-fourth of SAP Labs' India headcount contributes to one-fifth of their global research and development. In product development, one-fourth of the Indian employee base focuses on Business Process Platform. India also houses SAP largest production team outside Germany providing assembly, validation and testing services.