Infosys and SAP announced that Infosys has signed up to the SAP Global Service Partner Program in order to strengthen its capabilities to deliver enhanced value to customers. This announcement marks an important milestone in the relationship between the two organizations, which have been working together for more than five years to help companies realize information technology (IT) and business results from their investments in SAP applications.

Through this newly expanded relationship, customers will benefit from bolstered implementation services, enhanced solution delivery and increased global reach. Progressive companies such as ABB Group have already realized the benefits of the existing partnership.

"Infosys' SAP implementation approach is highly specialized and in lockstep with industry best practices," said Mauro Romano, internal controlling officer at ABB. "Compliance is assured during every phase of the implementation or upgrade, providing enterprises with ample opportunity to review or realign internal controls to enable better business practices. The end result of this collaborative approach is a reduced year-over-year compliance cost and improved control mechanisms."

Kodak, the global imaging innovator, has also benefited from the partnership. The company selected Infosys to help implement its SAP-enabled transformation globally.
"Infosys' solution and delivery capabilities in the Greater Asia region not only improved the time to market and predictability, but reduced the cost of implementation," said Imran Khan, chief information officer, Consumer Digital Imaging Group & Graphic Communication Group, Kodak

Infosys' SAP Practice has been growing at nearly 70 percent annually over the past five years and is a key contributor to the expansion of the SAP ecosystem. According to the December 2007 report Forrester Wave: SAP Implementation Providers, Q4 2007, "Infosys has the best pre-implementation process consulting expertise of any other pure-play Indian provider, and comes closest to successfully competing against the legacy multinationals in this area ... Infosys' SAP application services practice is aligned along verticals to ensure that clients get the benefit of its deep vertical process expertise."

"Infosys' SAP Practice has grown rapidly as customers globally have responded to our unique value proposition, combining pre-implementation business consulting with delivery excellence," said S.D. Shibulal, chief operating officer and member of the board, Infosys Technologies, Ltd. "Today's partnership expansion underscores our commitment to SAP applications and our vision of enabling businesses to win in a 'flat world.' Through this partnership, we can provide our customers with access to some of the finest expertise in the world. We'll help service their implementations of SAP applications, leading to faster ROI."

Infosys further plans to establish a solution center in Bangalore to help ensure that Infosys' SAP Practice professionals continue to help customers advance to the next generation of SAP solutions. Infosys will also take an instrumental role in enabling customers to access the business benefits of enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA), which is designed to provide businesses with an agile, powerful infrastructure required to grow their businesses and adapt rapidly to changing market conditions. With Infosys' newly founded India Business Unit and the collaboration with SAP India, the partnership will support the development of the fast-growing Indian market.

"Having a strong ecosystem is critical to SAP's success and something that has been instrumental in helping SAP extend its global reach," said Zia Yusuf, executive vice president, Global Ecosystem and Partner Group, SAP. "To become an SAP global services partner, a company must not only demonstrate repeated implementation success, but, more importantly, be committed to SAP's vision of enabling enterprise SOA for our global customers. We have found this in Infosys, and look forward to working on future customer collaborations with them."