BusinessWeek reports that SAP now has more than 27,000 major customers who run over 91,500 installations of its software. That number will continue to grow, as SAP recently released a statement claiming a 26% software revenue growth and 20% service revenue growth in the first quarter of 2011. For an ISV, this represents a new customer channel that, if tapped, can potentially grow your business exponentially. The challenge is in creating a certified integration solution between your product and SAP and then tapping the proper channels to introduce your product to SAP customers. Our skilled partner-enablement specialists can work with your sales, marketing, development and support organizations to help you maximize the potential of the SAP marketplace.

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Expanding Your Customer Base

SAP customers represent the Who’s Who of the business marketplace, making up over 70% of the Global 5000.  In choosing the “SAP way” customers opt to run their core business functions within a tightly integrated eco-system, driving value by making resources more efficient, while minimizing the business friction across processes. This proposition forces third-party best-of-breed applications to tightly integrate with SAP in order to thrive in such a valuable marketplace. SAP’s strategic importance to the CIO, both because of the processes it drives, as well as the customer’s ERP investment, makes certification a necessity to all ISV’s targeting mid- and large-tier organizations.

Partnering with DataXstream

By working with DataXstream, software vendors develop, test, and demonstrate their software and systems without worrying about the configuration, setup, and maintenance of an SAP system.  DataXstream leverages its extensive experience with SAP interface technologies and SAP systems architecture to successfully integrate complementary products with SAP.  We build integration solutions that leverage standard integration design approaches and techniques.  Our integration philosophy is to minimize integration complexity and configuration, while providing robust designs that effectively manage volume, accurately deliver data when it is needed, and recover from error events when they occur.

Integrating Your Application With SAP

DataXstream offers a stream-lined and configurable solution to integrate, certify, maintain, and promote third party solutions in SAP landscapes. Leveraging DataXstream’s integration team, significant SAP infrastructure, and the Xstream Connector(a pre-certified SAP-specific, integration platform), we can quickly deliver a tailored connector to pass data and trigger actions between your application and SAP, without SAP error-handling or logic.  Starting with the Xstream Connector codebase, DataXstream can develop an integration that optimizes your application’s value, maximizes the number of possible opportunities, and minimizes downstream maintenance.   Taking advantage of our SAP infrastructure (which includes many different versions of R/3, ECC, BI, XI, PI, EP, and Solution Manager), DataXstream can rapidly prototype solutions, trouble shoot technical problems for customers, and stand up new landscapes and applications through the use of server virtualization.  Our integration solutions lower the total cost of certification with SAP, while optimizing the upside sales into the SAP marketplace.

Certifying Your Application With SAP

Once the connector is packaged, DataXstream can broker your certification with SAP, a process that can bring many benefits, including:

• Access and exposure to SAP’s customer base;
• Entry into a collaborative environment where partners support one another and work toward greater customer success;
• Access to our partner-only portals for product;
• Marketing, sales, and competitive information;
• Sales and marketing assistance;
• Technical support;
• Participation in SAP events; and
• The SAP Referral Program.

By leveraging pre-built document templates, test scripts, the company’s extensive in-house computing environment (over 20 unique SAP instances across multiple releases), and relationships with SAP Certifier, DataXstream can shrink the certification process from months to weeks while ensuring positive results. Scheduled re-certification becomes a breeze by keeping the tailored solutions loaded, and changes carefully tracked.

Marketing Your Application

DataXstream wants you to be successful in the SAP marketplace.  SAP certification can help your initial marketing efforts, but partnering with DataXstream can help your continued marketing efforts.   Before partnering with you, DataXstream does a full business case for your product, and identifies competitors, gaps in the SAP product, and general market need.  Based on the results of the business case, DataXstream presents the different partnering options available to you.  Once you become a partner, DataXstream educates your sales team on SAP specific terminology, benefits, and user roles. Most importantly, we provide a demonstration center, whereby your team can show the two applications working together, seamlessly moving data and triggering actions between them.

Deploying Your Application

Once a customer acquires the integration, DataXstream offers the professional services to deploy and configure it. Owing to SAP’s incredible flexibility, practically all customer environments involve multiple instances, each extensively customized, to address a customer’s unique business needs. Leveraging over 200 years of combined SAP experience, the DataXstream team has configured or integrated some of the largest and most complex systems in the world.

Maintaining Your Application

Just like your application and SAP, the connector requires adjustment whether for a customer’s ultra-unique SAP implementation, for upgrades to either application, or to add capability that further enhances your solution’s value to the customer.  DataXstream provides annual technical support to your team, while optionally evolving the connector to meet the opportunities of new versions or computing environments.