Sema Group and SAP Announce Strategic Global Alliance to Deliver Integrated Solutions for the Passenger Transport Industry

Business Wire, August 2, 2000

Business/Technology Editors

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--August 2, 2000

Sema Group (Nasdaq: SEMA), a world leading IT and business services company, and SAP, the leading provider of inter-enterprise software solutions, announced today that they have formed a strategic global alliance to provide leading edge software solutions for the passenger transit industry.

The first output of the alliance is a unique industry solution that is highly tailored by Sema Group to mirror and support the existing processes of the urban passenger transit industry. Sema Group is also developing new functionality on the SAP R/3 platform to further enhance the offering to this market. Sema Group already supports over 60% of the UK bus market and the new product will open significant opportunities in the wider international passenger transit market. The solutions will be available from September 2000.

Frank Jones, Executive Vice President of Sema Group, commented, "Sema Group is delighted to have formed this alliance with SAP as it consolidates our position as the leading supplier of integrated solutions for the international transit market. Our customers are increasingly involved in international mergers and acquisitions and these solutions will assist the integration, consolidation and streamlining of these organizations to create strong profitable, growth businesses."

Werner Sommer, Vice President of the SAP Service Provider Industry Business Unit, said, "SAP has a strategic and established presence for the passenger transit industry. This strategic alliance with Sema Group will strengthen our offering and further demonstrate our commitment to support our passenger transit customers and their efforts to manage future business growth."

Benefits

The partnership combines Sema Group's extensive experience and in-depth expertise in working with operators in passenger transit with SAP's market leading knowledge of developing inter-enterprise software solutions.

In addition, Sema Group brings worldwide systems integration capabilities to the partnership. This will enable the end solutions to fully integrate the separate divisions within a transit operators' business including support for engineering, depot operations, financial and commercial activities, e-business and management information.

About Sema Group

Sema Group, is one of the world's leading IT and business service companies. The Group's 1999 turnover was (pound)1.41 billion, showing a 20 percent increase when compared with the 1998 full results. Turnover has more than doubled over the past five years. The Group has 22,000 staff working across 160 sites worldwide. www.semagroup.com

About SAP

As the market leader of inter-enterprise software solutions, SAP is leveraging its strength in industry-focused business software and the world's largest enterprise software customer base to deliver mySAP.com. MySAP.com provides an open collaborative business environment of personalized solutions on demand. This enables companies of all sizes and industries to fully engage their employees, customers and partners to capitalize upon the new Internet economy. MySAP.com allows people to harness the power of the Internet to work smarter, better and faster by optimizing supply chains, managing strategic relationships, reducing time to market, sharing virtual information, and increasing productivity and shareholder value. SAP is listed on several stock exchanges including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP". The SAP World Wide Web site can be found at http://www.sap.com