SAP, Open Text Pen Reseller Agreement

SAP and Open Text announced on May 2 that the companies have partnered up on a reseller agreement that will allow SAP to deliver enterprise content management software from Open Text to enterprises.

SAP and Open Text have been partners for 20 years, and their latest agreement lets SAP resell two of Open Text's products globally under the titles "SAP Archiving by Open Text" and "SAP Document Access by Open Text", both of which target enterprises in the financial services, public sector and healthcare industries.

Under the agreement, SAP applications will incorporate Open Text's Livelink ECM (enterprise content management) platforms, which provides enterprises with data and document archiving as well as document access in an SAP application.

"The agreement with Open Text is just one part of SAP's emerging ECM strategy and will enable SAP to offer a tightly integrated archiving and document management solution worldwide," Jason Loesche, spokesperson for the Germany-based SAP, told eWEEK.

Doug Jones, vice president of strategic alliances for the Canadian-based Open Text, said that the ECM market is rapidly changing with major players now in the market.

"To compete among these major players, one of our key strategies is to extend solutions from Microsoft, SAP and Oracle and offer ECM capabilities for more complex needs."

SAP Archiving by Open Text utilizes imaging, SAP data and document archiving components of Livelink ECM, a platform that is able to store data on optical media or a compliant disk storage platform.

"Over 70 percent of SAP customers still do not have a compliant archiving and document management solution and legal regulations are forcing customers to archive," Loesche said. "With these new solutions, SAP is in a better position to meet these customer needs."

SAP Document Access by Open Text uses the capabilities of the archiving platform and adds the ability to view business documents and data across SAP and non-SAP applications as well as a Web browser-based interface that allows users to retrieve content.

"The solutions being resold by SAP matter to customers because they enhance storage, compliance and process efficiencies, and address specific business challenges that most face," Loesche said.

The agreement also calls for SAP to have worldwide rights to resell Open Text's document management and archiving platforms for use with SAP and Open Text's Livelink ECM Suite for SAP Solutions.

"Having better ways to manage and access these documents helps improve the critical business processes that depend on these systems," Jones said.

Copyright 2007 by Ziff Davis Media, Distributed by United Press International