SAP R/3 Release 4.0 Eliminates Trade-Off Between Best of Breed and Integration, Delivers Benefits of Both; New Components for Finance, Logistics, Human Resources; Complete and Enhanced Business Solutions for Supply Chain, Retail, Public Sector, Utilities

Business Wire, August 25, 1997

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 25, 1997-- At its SAPPHIRE(R) '97 user conference today, SAP AG announced that R/3(TM) Release 4.0 will be shipping to customers by year-end 1997 and will be generally available by the second quarter of 1998.

The next major version of SAP's enterprise solution, R/3 Release 4.0 delivers new best-in-class functionality, improved speed and flexibility, faster implementation and upgrades, and the most comprehensive extended supply-chain capabilities available.

With R/3 Release 4.0, new Business Components and complementary software products, SAP provides complete and enhanced business solutions for several industries, including retail, public sector and utilities. The addition of SAP Retail in R/3 Release 4.0 makes SAP the first vendor to offer extended supply-chain business processes from the point of product design to the point of consumption.

Mix-and-match solutions have traditionally provided specialized functionality at the expense of enterprisewide visibility and integration; with R/3 Release 4.0, companies no longer have to accept this trade-off.

Release 4.0, based on the SAP Business Framework(TM) component architecture, marks the first time SAP will deliver major new R/3 functionality through components, providing customers with a new level of speed and flexibility for integrating best-in-class business processes for industry-specific, business or global expansion -- one component at a time.

R/3 Release 4.0 delivers the following: -0-

-- The most comprehensive financial applications, including a new Treasury component

-- New logistics functionality, boosting SAP's leadership in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market

-- A new Human Resources component, providing the broadest set of global capabilities available

-- Complete and enhanced business solutions for supply chain, retail, public sector, utilities, and aerospace and defense

-- Business Framework tools and integration technologies, providing unprecedented openness and flexibility -0-

"R/3 Release 4.0 is a landmark release for SAP in terms of leveraging the Business Framework to expand into new markets and industries," said Prof. Dr. Henning Kagermann, executive board member of SAP AG.

"It is not only a major release in terms of functionality, it demonstrates SAP's commitment to delivering complete solutions for industries by integrating SAP components and third-party components."

Best-in-Class Functionality Without Sacrificing Integration or Flexibility

By evolving R/3 into a family of integrated components with the Business Framework, SAP has been able to provide significant new capabilities with Business and Internet Components, each on its own release cycle independent of R/3. Further, SAP has dramatically enhanced the breadth and depth of its core capabilities.

Based on close collaboration with customers, SAP has overhauled and streamlined the end-user interaction for virtually all transactions and added a new "active" help facility for increased ease of use.

(In fact, so much is new in R/3 Release 4.0 that additional details on new functionality, components, industries and technology have been provided in separate news briefs. New Internet and Business Components that are also compatible with R/3 Release 3.x are indicated by Note A.) -0-

-- SAP delivers the world's most comprehensive financial applications, which include enhancements to core financial functionality such as corporate costing with transfer pricing, activity-based costing, profitability simulation, and decentralized controlling and budgeting. Release 4.0 has opened up R/3 with new business event-based publish and subscribe capabilities. Further, SAP is adding new country versions for Argentina and Brazil and support for the new euro currency. In addition, SAP is delivering five new financial Business Components:

-- Consolidation

-- Investment Controlling

-- Treasury

-- Self-Audit

-- Joint Venture Accounting -0-

"We worked closely with SAP on the development of Activity Based Costing in R/3 Release 4.0," said David A. McDonald, senior director, operations control, Anheuser-Busch Inc. "This functionality will allow companies to focus not only on product costing, but also on the underlying business processes."

-- New R/3 Release 4.0 logistics functionality boosts SAP's leadership in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market with enhancements to the core applications, focusing on the extended supply chain including flow manufacturing, distribution resource planning, sequencing, euro price management, and credit and payment card handling. In addition, SAP is delivering several new Business and Internet Components:

-- Sales Configuration Engine (SCE)(Note A)

-- Product Data Management (PDM)(Note A)

-- Available-to-Promise (ATP) Server

-- Web-Based Catalog and Purchase Requisition System(Note A) -0-

-- New Human Resources (HR) component provides the broadest set of global capabilities available and is the first core application area of the SAP R/3 System to become a Business Component that can be either used independently or integrated, and can be upgraded on its own release cycle. A new Travel Management component is also available for HR or Financials. R/3 Release 4.0 adds support for euro and dual currency across HR and Payroll. In addition, SAP has doubled the number of countries supported with Payroll to 30, including Argentina, Brazil, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, and Venezuela.