“Partnering is not a choice for SAP. The choice has been made.”
- Bill McDermott, SAP CEO
To resonate Bill’s statement,
Partner Innovation Lifecycle Services (PLS) helps partners to transform ideas into innovative solutions that compliments SAP. The core vision is to Innovate with partners to maximize customer success and offer services along the partner innovation lifecycle to accelerate market adoption of SAP and partner portfolios. With over 3,50,000 customers worldwide, PLS focuses on helping partners and ISVs towards adoption of its latest technology.
“By 2019 40% of all software revenue will be on a subscription basis” - IDC InfoBrief
IDC expects that by 2017, 80% of large organizations will commit to hybrid cloud architectures that encompass public and private cloud infrastructure, middleware, software, and non-cloud IT assets. Customers are embracing cloud as they recognize that traditional technology ownership model is inadequate for agility and they appreciate financial flexibility. SAP and partners are helping customers with this transition.
Partner Innovation Lifecycle Services (PLS) at Middle East was formed in Q1 2017 to extend our footprint in one of the fastest growing markets for SAP and explore opportunities within the partner ecosystem. Middle East and Africa is one of the fastest growing markets for SAP with a very strong partner community.
Most of our partners in this region are Value Added Re-sellers (VAR’s) and System Integrators (SI’s), they have strong knowledge about SAP’s latest offerings and are well-equipped with deep local business understanding. Lots of innovation are coming from partners around SAP BusinessOne, SAP ByDesign, SAP Cloud Platform, SAP S/4 HANA and IoT. We see many new businesses emerging especially in the Small Medium Business market.
Being VAR’s and SI’s, most partners sell licenses along with their services. PLS is helping partners to re-invent themselves with new business models to sustain this cloud transition. With more customers moving to cloud it becomes challenging for partners to compete and sell their services. PLS helps partners to productize their ideas through “Co-Innovated with SAP” program, where the partners use case will be validated by the product development team to avoid partner developing solutions that conflicts with SAP’s road map. A project lead will be assigned through the entire engagement to support partner for the entire product development lifecycle. After completion, the product will go through assessment and validation against product standards. Finally, the solution will be certified by SAP Integration and Certification Center (SAP ICC) to endorse the integration of their solution with SAP
Partner can get both products and services endorsed by SAP through the certification program from SAP Integration Certification Center (SAP ICC) and Outsourcing Partner Certification (SAP OPC). Certified solution from SAP Integration and Certification Center is valid and approved by SAP customers globally. Partner can develop a solution in Dubai, Egypt or Lebanon and sell it to a customer in any part of the globe thereby creating global market beyond Middle East and Africa. This creates a tremendous opportunity for partners as the certified product help customers to make quicker decision. Customers are assured that certification from SAP reduces the project risk, save total costs, and increase implementation speed. Hence, SAP customers considering ICC certification a prerequisite to consider partner products.
Also, partners can leverage SAP branding. Usage of strategic logos “Co-Innovated with SAP”, SAP Certified Built on Cloud Platform, SAP Certified Integration with SAP S/4 HANA, SAP Certified in Hosting Services in marketing materials are permitted
All partner solutions “Co-Innovated with SAP”, certified by SAP will be published into Partner App Center
https://www.sapappcenter.com/home
All Certified partners who run IT operations and manage SAP applications and platforms for SAP customers will listed in our SAP directory:
https://www.sap.com/dmc/exp/2012_Partner_Guide/partner-list.html
What our partner say about “Co-Innovated with SAP”
“The joint engagement with SAP has been very positive. The Best Practices received from SAP during the project have been very helpful to build a state-of-the-art Solution. Further joint engagements with SAP are already in the planning. Thanks for your support.” - Uwe Sester, Camelot ITLab GmbH
What our partner say about SAP Integration and Certification Center:
“The SAP ICC certifications has helped close upto a dozen customers and depending on geography almost 100% of clients wanted a SAP ICC certified product. Without certification, the sales-cycle is either considerable longer or not progressing at all” – Tobias Bloch, Accenture
