SAP looks to play well with others

SAP has unveiled its latest round of new projects

Enterprise software specialist SAP is highlighting its ability to work outside its own walls.

The company held a press conference on Tuesday to unveil its latest efforts to draw on minds from outside the company in order to improve its products.

Among the new projects will be an initiative to solicit new ideas through InnoCentive, an online marketplace specialising in the exchange of new business ideas and processes.

Under the deal, SAP will contribute $25,000 for a series of contests as well as an undisclosed investment in the company.

In exchange, InnoCentive will create and maintain the "SAP technology and innovation pavilion" which will allow developers and SAP customers to buy and sell new products and services for the company's software.

SAP also announced a new certification programme for third-party consultants. The initiative will issue licences for experts in what the company terms " business process management".

The consultants will be fully certified by the company and will be trained to help with analysing and revising the processes which companies use to evaluate new ideas and put them in place.

Among the tasks charged to the consultants will be teaching best practices and making efficient use of service oriented architectures.

The company also announced a new offering stemming from one of its recent high-profile acquisitions, business intelligence specialist Business Objects.

SAP has released a new version of the Business Objects metadata management system allowing companies to better index and organise internal data within a large number of departments and divisions.

The new version of the system is the first step in a larger effort to interweave the Business Objects software with SAP's Netweaver products, according to Business Objects chief executive John Schwarz.

"We are pretty much finished with the integration of our people and we are pretty much integrated with our processes," Schwarz told reporters. "Now we have begun the hard job of integrating our technology."