SAP and Yahoo! Collaborate To Attract All Business Users; New Solution To Provide Open Enterprise Portal Platform and Rich Personalized Content

Business Wire, April 4, 2001

Business Editors/Technology Writers

WALLDORF, Germany, & SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 4, 2001

SAP AG (NYSE:SAP) and Yahoo!(R) Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced their intention to form a far-reaching partnership that extends both companies' leadership in the rapidly growing enterprise portal market.

Together they will deliver a state-of-the-art enterprise portal solution that enables companies to improve productivity and create efficiencies by providing employees, customers and partners with a single place to access all the information, applications and services they need from both internal and external sources. The joint enterprise portal solution provides both "stickiness" and empowerment.

Under the agreement, the companies will work together to develop a joint enterprise portal and market it directly to their customers and through their respective sales channels. SAP Portals, the new SAP subsidiary devoted to creating enterprise portals and information solutions (see today's related release), will work with both SAP and Yahoo! to provide an unparalleled combination of an enterprise portal platform and open access to applications, services and rich personalized external content.

The combined solution will leverage Yahoo!'s position as the No. 1 most visited Web site in the workplace according to Nielsen//NetRatings latest rankings as well as SAP's clear leadership in the e-business solutions market. The enterprise portal by Yahoo! and SAP will be a natural extension of what both companies already do well: provide scalable and customized content and solutions on a global basis with the individual in mind. It will provide people with a single point of access to information, applications and services from both SAP and Yahoo!, as well as third-party components, including e-business applications and services, online exchanges, enterprise content and global Internet content available in 12 languages from Yahoo!'s 2,000 content and service providers.

"This agreement will further solidify Yahoo!'s position as a major player in the enterprise portal market, and advances the Yahoo! platform that has been adopted by major companies, including McDonald's, Honeywell and Seagate Technology," said Tim Koogle, chairman and chief executive officer of Yahoo! Inc. "Working in tandem with SAP, we see a tremendous opportunity to extend our platform through delivering the joint enterprise portal solution through our combined channels."

"The combination of SAP and Yahoo! will provide the best solution for all companies in terms of content, scalability and application integration," said Hasso Plattner, co-chairman of the executive board, CEO and co-founder of SAP AG. "Ours will be the best available enterprise portal that combines robust content and functionality with an intuitive user interface. We expect the joint product will be the enterprise portal of choice for business."

Partners Share a Vision

The vision of SAP and Yahoo! for enterprise portals is aligned: to provide employees -- as well as the extended business community of customers, partners, suppliers and other stakeholders -- with convenient access to the resources they need to manage the immense flow of business information, processes and transactions. The new enterprise portal will provide interactive information, application and process services to support people in the new e-business work force.

The enterprise portal will leverage role-based personalization so people can view information that is important and relevant to them. The content will be determined by their roles within their organization, with services and applications based on their tasks and responsibilities. In addition, people will be able to customize content to meet their unique needs and preferences. For example, an individual may have everything from human resources information or sales tracking applications to financial news, industry marketplaces, personal stock portfolios and collaboration tools all in one easy-to-use place. SAP will supply key e-business applications and services, SAP Portals will provide tailored role-based business information, analytics, enterprise portal services and third-party unification, and Yahoo! will provide a global Internet platform and access to content and personalization services.

People will have access to their personalized information any time, anywhere as the solution can be accessed via both standard Web browsers and mobile devices. With an enterprise portal strategy from SAP and Yahoo!, all communities within an organization will be able to securely access their working environment from airport Internet kiosks, the home office, the hotel room laptop or even the corporate office network. The joint enterprise portal offering will be available in the second quarter of 2001.

Hasso Plattner and Tim Koogle will be discussing this partnership today at 10 a.m. EDT during a press conference that will be webcast live from New York at: http://www.sap.com.

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