Bangkok--8 Aug--Aziam Burson-Marsteller SAP Underlines “Business At The Speed of Change” as Critical to Success of Thailand Businesses As a part of its annual business and technology forum, SAP Summit 2007 today headed to Bangkok for the 7th time at Queen Sirikit National Convention Center, bringing together over 1,500 attendees including customers, partners, industry experts, media and analysts. At the Summit, leading business software provider SAP highlighted responsiveness to change as critical to the continued growth and success of Thailand businesses. In an era of increased competition and commoditization, SAP is underlining the importance and the need for businesses to fuel profitable growth by relying on accelerated business innovation and the productivity of non-differentiating tasks to help accelerate business innovation. All participants benefited from this event, which showcased the SAP portfolio of Enterprise, small and midsize business (SME) solutions with rapid implementation and full local support through Thailand and international partners based in Thailand. Thailand is the 15th country where SAP Summit 2007 is being held. It runs May to November, visiting 34 prominent and emerging markets in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The last country visited was Vietnam. “We continue to be the clear Asia Pacific market share leader in all major enterprise software categories, while our competitors focusing on acquisitions have actually been losing market share. SAP’s applications have been selected by customers across all key industry sectors, in companies ranging from large enterprises to SMEs,” said Eric MacDonald, President and CEO of SAP South East Asia. “The latest figures from both Gartner and IDC validate our clear enterprise applications market share leadership in the region in every major solution category. We’re truly a market-maker, growing more than two times faster than the market. This further proves the success of SAP’s organic growth and game-changing innovation strategy.” SAP has enjoyed 13 consecutive quarters of double-digit software license growth. For the second quarter of 2007, SAP Asia Pacific and Japan, software revenue grew 44% compared to the same period last year. SAP now has over 8,200 customers in Asia Pacific and Japan, of which two-thirds are SME customers. Nine SME customers were added every working day during the second quarter of 2007. Some recent customers wins in Thailand include Daimond Roof Co.,Ltd, Government Saving Bank, Channel 7, Thoresen Thai Agencies Co.,Ltd as the reference customers in Thailand . During the Summit, participants gained knowledge and insight from informative presentations, industry and IT-specific breakout tracks, and focused planning sessions that explored how to take advantage of the profound changes affecting Thailand businesses. “The objective for organizing SAP Summit 2007 Bangkok is to present our technology and the business software needs of rapidly growing SMEs and large enterprises as the best on offer to the Thai market. This aim is supported by the fact that we believe our technology, which is based on years of research and development as well as real-world experience, can assist and enable large, medium and small enterprises to better manage their fast pace of growth in this dynamic economic growth phase,” said Patara Yongvanich, Managing Director, SAP Thailand. “Local entrepreneurs really need to respond in a timely manner to competitive challenges. If businesses want to gain a competitive advantage, they need to recognize and more importantly, take action to meet their organization’s needs for automation of processes and the application of business software. They should be able to implement business changes on a regular basis, providing insights in an intuitive manner to their knowledge workers. With our release of SAP ERP 6.0, SAP responds to these requirements with more extensive verticalization, better access to information and tangible progress towards our stated goal of providing adaptable, service-oriented software applications,” he added. The 2007 SAP Summit in Bangkok focused on five main topics. Firstly, the Summit addressed how enterprise services-oriented architecture can enable business and IT to work better together to improve a company’s ability to change and grow. Secondly, attendees learned how the SAP Business Process Platform enables change through enterprise services that unite technology and applications and can deliver fundamental business functionality supported by highly reusable parts of SAP software, which is developed for several specific industries such as financial services, manufacturing, consumer products retail and automotive. Thirdly, the presentations showcased the latest innovations and enhancements in SAP Business Suite applications. Fourthly, the event shared the latest SAP on-demand solution, SAP CRM (Customer Relationship Management) on demand, as the ideal way to maintain customers in the center of your business. Lastly, the SAP Summit presented the latest SAP portfolio of affordable and easy-to-implement solutions for Small and Midsize Enterprises (SMEs). About SAP SAP is the world’s leading provider of business software*. More than 38000 customers in more than 120 countries run SAP? applications—from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize enterprises to suite offerings for global organizations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver? platform to drive innovation and enable business change, SAP software helps enterprises of all sizes around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations. SAP solution portfolios support the unique business processes of more than 25 industries, including high tech, retail, financial services, healthcare and the public sector. With subsidiaries in more than 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol “SAP.” (Additional information at http://www.sap.com) For more information, please contact James Best/Barakorn Aziam Burson-Marsteller Tel 02 252 9871 E-mail: [email protected]