Today's business cycles occur faster than ever. Globalization, industry consolidation, and mounting IT complexity are just a few of the motivating forces commanding a permanent shift away from linear business thinking to a more dynamic, multidimensional system of change. SAP's ecosystem offers the most comprehensive and consistent industry approach to enable customers, partners, and individuals to accelerate innovation, improve ROI, and grow beyond their own enterprise boundaries.

Connecting Customers, Partners, and Individuals

In the SAP ecosystem, customers find qualified expertise, insights, answers, and connections that are right for their business. Working within the ecosystem is fast and effective – whether engaging a new partner or co-innovating using complementary technology, customers can access broader knowledge quickly to make more informed decisions. The SAP ecosystem is a novel approach to smarter business management that drives measurable results – and benefits all customers we serve. To learn more about this approach, read customer reference case studies.

To foster an ideal environment for ongoing innovation and value creation, SAP has developed a comprehensive approach around three core capabilities.

Industry-Focused Excellence

The SAP ecosystem helps customers address challenges specific to their industry and business process needs. And through the ecosystem, customers and partners work with SAP to shape industry solutions and product roadmaps. Through the ecosystem we provide 15 Industry Value Networks where customers and partners work together to develop leading industry solutions. We also have more than 425,000 members in our Business Process Expert Community who share business process best practices and more than 2,000 services partners that help deploy SAP in specific industries.

Community-Powered Results

The SAP ecosystem quickly links you to the people, organizations, and resources you need, when you need them. SAP's Communities of Innovation provide a role- and task-based approach to engage with the wealth of resources available through the ecosystem. Developers can engage with more than 1.2 million other developers in the SAP Developer Network (SDN). Customers and partners can engage with each other in our Enterprise Services Community to create new service definitions that meet their business requirements. Business Process Experts can engage with each other in our BPX community, and more.

This community approach achieves tremendous results. For example, our SDN community has more than 6,000 postings each day for over 200 major topics. Communities also provide SAP with the best possible way to reflect the voice of our customers in our own products. In the latest release of SAP enhancement pack, for example, more than 50% of the enterprise service bundles were developed via the SAP ecosystem.

Orchestrated Co-Innovation

The SAP ecosystem brings together diverse relationships, resources, and communities to help develop the next generation of effective solutions in concert with SAP development efforts. Customers may have unique or emerging innovation needs not met by existing solutions. Fostering collaboration around these needs ensures ongoing innovation and value for everyone.