At an SAP Global Partner Summit conference, SAP today announced today that it is making available test and demo environments for its S/4 enterprise resource planning (ERP) and C/4 customer experience applications available to partners for one year starting in the third quarter.
That move follows a decision to provide access to a test and development environment on SAP Cloud last year. After one year, SAP will then reevaluate whether to continue to make those resources available for free, but the overall goal is to reduce instances where SAP appears to be monetizing the relationship it has with partners, says Karl Fahrbach, chief partner officer for SAP.
SAP today also promised to make it simpler for independent software vendors (ISVs) that build applications using tools other than those provided by SAP to participate in the SAP App Center. Applications built using, for example, tools from Microsoft that might be deployed on Microsoft Azure are likely to be relevant to SAP customers, notes Fahrbach.
In general, Fahrbach says SAP is trying to make it simpler for channel partners of all types to engage SAP. As part of that effort, SAP has eliminated distinctions between resellers, integrators and developers to create a Next-Gen partner program that is being rolled out in phases over the next few years as the company changes how partners are rewarded by focusing more on customer satisfaction over the course of multi-year contract.
“The is a movement, not a program,” says Fahrbach. “We want to have customers for life.”
The primary goal is to make it simpler for partners to drive adoption of what SAP touts as the Intelligent Enterprise, which calls for organizations to integrate front-end customer experience applications with back office ERP applications to drive digital business transformation initiatives. The major challenge SAP faces is finding a way to make it simpler for organizations to achieve that goal by eliminating the need for partners and customers to negotiate multiple software licensing agreements spanning a half dozen or more platforms and services, notes Fahrbach.
SAP recently committed to driving triple-digit growth by 2023, including about $100 billion worth of greenfield customer experience management applications. It’s too early to say whether SAP will achieve that goal, but at the very least, partners can expect SAP to continue to lower the barriers that have historically made the company a challenge for many partners to engage.
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