SAP Portals' Enterprise Unification Portal Powers Getronics' New U.S. Corporate Portal

Business Wire, August 7, 2001

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 7, 2001

Enterprise Unification Portal Will Provide 4,000 Employees With

Remote Access to Mission-Critical Data and Systems

SAP Portals, Inc., a leading provider of open-enterprise portal and business intelligence products and a wholly owned subsidiary of SAP AG (NYSE:SAP), today announced the implementation of SAP Portals' Enterprise Unification Portal as the foundation of Getronics' new U.S. corporate portal, increasing internal communication and employee self-service.

Getronics is one of the world's leading providers of IT solutions and services to professional users of information technology.

Getronics US plans to deploy its corporate portal to all 4,000 of its U.S. employees by September 2001. Currently, 600 U.S. employees use the corporate portal to increase productivity and access to mission-critical information, thereby helping them do their jobs more effectively. The Getronics US portal provides its employees with complete access to time and expense management and human resource applications, the company intranet and the Internet, as well as a marketing portal.

Getronics US will implement SAP Portals' Enterprise Unification Portal to provide its employees, many of whom work off site at client locations, with information about all facets of Getronics' U.S. operations, while also providing real-time access to mission-critical information and systems. The greatest challenge was finding a solution that connected employees to multiple and disparate systems and applications in an efficient and effective manner.

With the help of Clarkston, an information technology consulting firm, Getronics US evaluated several portal vendors and chose to implement SAP Portals' Enterprise Unification Portal based on a broad collection of strengths, including industry-leading cross-product integration and low implementation cost. SAP Portals' Enterprise Unification Portal also offers superior integration and connectivity to Microsoft servers and applications within the portal. This served as a benchmark in support of Getronics' selection.

The SAP Portals portfolio includes enterprise portals, business intelligence applications, unique content offerings and professional services. Enterprise portal offerings are composed of SAP Portals' the Enterprise Information Portal, SAP Portals' Enterprise Collaboration Portal and SAP Portals' Enterprise Unification Portal. These products offer open, widely distributed portal solutions that integrate seamlessly with enterprise applications, a dynamic user interface, and the most innovative design and function within a portals product.

"Bringing people, ideas and information together across disparate systems and locales is among the key challenges facing any business today," said SAP Portals CEO Shai Agassi. "Getronics US looked to portal technology to solve the challenge of connecting thousands of employees, and we're proud that SAP Portals' Enterprise Unification Portal is the only portal solution they found to be robust enough for that challenge."

"We needed a technology that enabled us to bring our back-office ERP information onto the manager's e-business desktop," said Glen Slater, vice president of e-Business for Getronics US. "After a comprehensive evaluation of a number of portal solutions currently available on the market, SAP Portals was the only vendor that offered a solution with a unified platform and the scalability and adaptability to grow with our company. SAP Portals is now helping us support the increasing demand from our employees, clients and partners for real-time access to mission-critical information stored in our enterprise applications and systems."

About Getronics

With over 30,000 employees in 35 countries, Getronics is one of the world's leading providers of vendor independent solutions and services to professional users of information and communication technology.

Through consulting, integrating, implementing and managing infrastructure solutions and e-business solutions, Getronics helps many of the world's largest global and local organizations to maximize the value of their technology investment and improve interaction with their customers.

Getronics' headquarters is in Amsterdam, with regional head offices in Boston, Singapore and Washington, D.C. Getronics' shares are traded on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange ("GTN"). Further information about Getronics and its solutions and services can be found at http://www.getronics.com.

About SAP Portals

The enterprise portal and information management products of SAP Portals, Inc., provide the simplest, most powerful way for people to directly take charge of information and processes. People are empowered with one entry point to the wide variety of structured and unstructured information, Web content management, collaboration tools, CRM, SCM and ERP systems, as well as legacy systems already in use in the business. SAP Portals creates value and a competitive advantage for organizations and their employees, partners and customers by empowering people to collaborate effectively anywhere, at any time. SAP Portals is a wholly owned subsidiary of SAP AG (NYSE:SAP) with headquarters in Silicon Valley, Calif. For more information about SAP Portals, visit us on the Web at http://www.sapportals.com or call 800/360-3328.