SAP and IBM: The beginning of a beautiful friendship

Now that SAP is two months into their CRM on-demand market, new moves have been made by the company in order to more profitably exploit the resources at strategic partner IBM. News regarding the future has been emanating from SAP offices throughout April, as have been pledges to deliver quality from amidst a crowded market.

Through the partnership with IBM, SAP’s mySAP CRM software suite will now be hosted by IBM. The industry giant will also provide customization and operational support. This service is aimed at companies of 100 users or more, and currently all efforts are devoted to sales force automation. SAP representatives have promised that 2006 will see much further expansion of their CRM. Both IBM and SAP salespersons will be hawking the product, a quest that has already scored the connection two notable customers: American Standard and DuPont Chemical.

One news source has gone so far as to say that the SAP / IBM alliance and the resultant mySAP CRM suite is responsible for making on-demand business software mainstream. Of course, any IBM team has a major advantage over the competition in any such sphere, thanks to the ubiquitous presence of Windows. And SAP appears poised to take full advantage of the situation they may have created, promising an entire SAP CRM solution soon to be available.