SAP Acquires Crossgate for Business Social Networking
Looking to provide customers with options to connect with their business partners, SAP (NYSE: SAP) has announced plans to acquire business-to-business (B2B) integration provider Crossgate.
Headquartered in Munich, Germany, Crossgate lets companies integrate and network with trading partners, clients and suppliers, allowing electronic data exchange with any business partner regardless of their technical capability.
Companies can connect with any trading partner by joining the network once and linking with pre-built business partner profiles. The full-service solution eliminates the need for costly point-to-point integration.
The acquisition of Crossgate follows SAP's strategy to complement existing applications and solutions with acquisitions that offer innovative technologies and capabilities.
“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, SAP's general manager and head of Line of Business Solutions. “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.”
As a result of the acquisition, SAP said it will enable networking at the enterprise level, providing an easy way for trading partners to collaborate, share data and automate processes that link customers and suppliers for streamlined B2B e-commerce.
SAP and Crossgate have a partnership history as part of the SAP ecosystem. In October 2008 Crossgate received an investment from SAP, followed by a global reseller agreement that allowed SAP to offer its customers Crossgate's B2B Content Engine as an SAP solution extension under the product name SAP Information Interchange application by Crossgate. More recently, SAP 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.
“Crossgate is extremely excited that SAP, our long-term partner, has acquired our company and solutions,” said Stefan Tittel, CEO and founder, Crossgate. “With combined social network paradigms and service extensions of business applications, SAP and Crossgate now have the potential to change the face of business networks and deliver a new level of collaboration to SAP customers and their business network partners.”
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