Telecom Lead Middle East: SAP will invest $450 million
(AED1.65 billion) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in 4 years
to improve skill local talent and drive innovation and growth.
The company will be recruiting more than 500 additional
employees, opening several new offices and expanding the company’s partner
ecosystem and the SAP University Alliances program. Significant increases will
also be made in the availability of comprehensive, innovative and localized
service offerings.
SAP MENA will set up a Training and Development Institute
to certify 2,000 new consultants within the next four years. This will triple
the company’s existing consulting capabilities in the region and further
support the localization of SAP solutions to meet regional industry needs.
“The MENA market is remarkable in its growth
potential, scope and readiness to innovate, and we strongly believe that now is
the right time to take our operations and engagement to the next level. SAP’s
additional investment will enable us to deliver leading-edge innovation, better
localization and more talent to our customers and partners, as well as help
develop crucial skills-sets and employment opportunities in MENA,” said
Werner Brandt, chief financial officer and SAP Executive Board member.
SAP expects to significantly grow its MENA revenues by
2015, building on an impressive double-digit compound growth rate between 2008
and 2011 and establishing the region as one of the company’s top-10 growth markets
globally.
In 2011, SAP’s global software revenue increased 25
percent at constant currencies to EUR 4 billion and IFRS total revenue
increasing 14 percent to EUR 14.2 billion.
IDC recently named SAP as MENA’s leading enterprise
application software (EAS) vendor with a more than 37 percent market share.
“Innovative technologies such as mobility and the
cloud are among the fastest growing IT segments and are already having a
significant impact on businesses’ ability to grow and innovate,” said
Jyoti Lalchandani, vice president and regional managing director, IDC Middle
East and Africa.
“Since the formation of SAP in MENA in late 2007, we
have focused on expanding our regional presence by building value-based
customer relationships with our world-class expertise, fostering talent and
enabling our ecosystem,” said Sam Alkharrat, managing director, SAP MENA.
SAP introduces Telco 2.0 Challenge to enable Innovative
business models
Recently, SAP launched Telco 2.0 Challenge at Mobile
World Congress in Barcelona to help telecommunications companies visualize and
prototype innovative “Telco 2.0” business models.
Through the challenge, SAP invites telecommunications
companies to submit their best ideas for new service offerings and revenue
streams. The main aim of this challenge is to get ideas that potentially cannot
be deployed with existing infrastructure due to cost or inflexibility.
