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SAP, Huawei, sign mutual assistance pact

WORLD DOMINATION the plan for giant pair

SAP has deepened its ties with China and found a new outlet in which to invest its growing wodge of cash, by naming mobile comms giant Huawei its first Global Technology Partner for the region.

The deal will see closer technology integration and support between the two and the joint development of new software for global customers across virtually all industries.

There were few details on exactly what kind of software and services, although Huawei claimed that customers would benefit from the join-up through lower TCO, accelerated app development, improved agility and operating efficiency.

The two will also build an “interoperability competency centre” and tout their wares with joint sales and marketing worldwide.

The deal is a smart move for SAP as it could not only give the firm access to a bigger pool of Chinese enterprises, but also companies in other markets where the telecoms kit maker has a big presence, such as Africa.

The German software giant is doing pretty well at the moment, breaking the €1bn mark in new software licence sales for the first time and posting its best Q2 results ever earlier this month.

In China, meanwhile, software license revenue was up by around a third – the firm’s best quarter ever in the PRC.

SAP has already announced a sizeable investment in the region, pledging over $2bn up to 2015.

The firm’s president of global customer operations, Robert Enslin, said in a canned statement that SAP wants to make China a top three market:

Many of China's biggest companies are our customers and we will continue to support their global growth and competitiveness with the latest innovations from SAP. To make this a reality, we have expanded our sales force by 50 percent this year.

As part of this growth, SAP also announced an expansion of its partnership with local operator China Telecom, based around delivering cloud-based enterprise products and MDM solutions, and the extension of its Startup Focus program to the region.

This initiative is designed to encourage smaller firms to grow their business via applications developed on SAP's HANA in-memory database platform.

A recent Gartner report labelled SAP’s China plans “positive and pragmatic”.

However, despite having a 2,000+ strong engineering team based in Shanghai, the software giant was still called out for its lack of skilled staff in the region.

“The shortage of analytical talent in China is a major challenge for SAP to overcome as it tries to execute its Chinese strategy quickly,” the report noted. ®

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