SAP to double headcount to 4,000 by 2006

SAP Labs has announced that it will more than double its development headcount to 4,000 professionals by 2006-end from the present 1,750.

The company had earlier stated that it will touch the 3,000 mark by 2006. It has now revised the estimate upwards to 4,000, underlining the growing importance of the India development centre, the fastest growing in SAP.

This expansion is part of the Euro 20 million ongoing third phase of expansion which SAP is implementing in India.

The business software solutions major has already invested 20 million euros in the first two expansion phases of the centre and the ongoing third phase will make the Indian centre the company's second largest development centre after the main one in Waldrof in Germany.

The expansion will also see the emergence of the India centre as a major hub for SAP NetWeaver development, a new platform on which SAP is betting heavily.

NetWeaver is the foundation of SAP's various offerings which is a package of composite applications, partner solutions and custom-built applications. It is an open integration and application platform that incorporates software applications like business intelligence which work in tandem with SAP's other offerings.

Prior to this platform, an enterprise customer had to get these additional applications from other vendors individually and integrate with SAP's solution. With NetWeaver, the integration becomes far less onerous.

In this effort, SAP has set up its NetWeaver Centre of Excellence which will facilitate the process of educating SAP partners in India and Asia Pacific on the platform.

Said Shai Agassi, president (product & technology group) & executive board member, SAP AG: "This centre will provide support on a project basis to SAP partners in developing prototypes and pilot solutions for customer requirements and migrating from legacy system onto our NetWeaver platform."

He added that SAP's Indian partners are building on their NetWeaver capabilities and SAP is working with and helping Indian and global corporations in designing a service-oriented architecture for their enter-prises.

SAP also plans to bring its Business One, a business-management solution for small and medium businesses, to India.