SAP acquires B2B networking hub Crossgate

SAP has acquired German business-to-business e-commerce hub Crossgate to allow customers to collaborate and share data more effectively with partners, suppliers and clients. 

Crossgate is described as a business social network, but differs from the likes of Chatter, Jive and Yammer as it focuses on data sharing between internal business users and their external partners.

"It's basically one of those B2B commerce hubs that were so popular in 2000," MWD Advisors analyst Angela Ashenden told V3.

"Crossgate is different to the business social networks we are familiar with today as it works at the operational level rather than the conversational level."

Ashenden suggested that the purchase is partly a competitive move, since IBM recently bought a similar firm, Sterling Commerce, and Tibco acquired Foresight.

Most importantly, though, SAP has focused recently on fleshing out its supplier relationship management applications with updates to Supplier Infonet and the firm's Sourcing application. The new acquisition is likely to bring added value to this focus, Ashenden argued.

Included in the Crossgate portfolio are e-invoicing services that cover inbound and outbound invoices, including signatures and compliance monitoring. The services can be integrated with customers' back-end systems and finance processes.

"Companies live in an evolving global network of customers and partners, and technology from Crossgate allows them to interact in new ways at the enterprise level the same way that social networking has transformed the way people interact as individuals," said Peter Maier, general manager and head of SAP's business solutions line.

"By acquiring Crossgate's highly differentiated solution, we help our customers extend their end-to-end business processes running on SAP to their customers and partners."

The acquisition is subject to approval by the relevant anti-trust authorities, and SAP will provide additional details about future plans after the deal is completed, which it anticipates will be by 1 November. 

SAP and Crossgate have been partners since 2008 when Crossgate received an investment from SAP.

The two firms then entered into a global reseller agreement that allowed SAP to offer Crossgate's B2B Content Engine as an SAP solution extension under the product name SAP Information Interchange application by Crossgate.

SAP recently agreed to resell and market the SAP E-Invoicing for Compliance application by Crossgate, which allows companies to send and receive digitally signed, compliant PDFs or EDI invoices electronically.