SAP to acquire Crossgate for B2B networking

The company says its purchase will extend SAP's ability to enable EDI between trading partners, clients and suppliers, regardless of their technical capabilities. Peter Maier, general manager, head of line of business solutions at SAP, says that SAP will now be able to ease networking at the enterprise level – easing the path for trading partners in terms of collaboration, data sharing and supply chain process automation. He says it's all about streamlined B2B e-commerce, noting that Crossgate already works with more than 40,000 business partners across multiple industries, looking after secure document and data exchange. Maier also observes that the acquisition is in line with SAP's strategy to complement existing applications and solutions with smart purchases 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, in the same way that social networking has transformed the way people interact," comments Maier. "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," he continues. "As a result, thousands of SAP customers will join the network to exchange information easier, execute transactions faster and collaborate better." "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," boasts Stefan Tittel, CEO and founder, Crossgate.