SAP to invest Dh1.65b to develop talent in region

Dubai Business solutions and software developer SAP is to invest Dh1.65 billion by 2015 to train and develop local talent in the Middle East, the company said Monday. Speaking at a Dubai press conference, SAP's Chief Financial Officer Werner Brandt said the company "expects to significantly grow its Mena [Middle East and North Africa] revenues by 2015, building on double-digit compound growth between 2008 and 2011 and establishing the region as one of the company's top 10 growth markets globally." "We have gone from laying the foundation and we are now in the growth stage," Sam Al Kharrat, SAP's managing director for the region, said. While company officials declined to break down the geographic details of the Dh1.65 billion investment, the new funds will create at least 500 new jobs, set up a training institute and will expand the German-based software developer to work more closely with universities in the region. While the growth plan is aggressive, it's also realistic, Brandt said, citing SAP's nine consecutive periods of growth now and 15 consecutive periods of growth previously. Mobility, in-memory computing and cloud services would drive this growth, Al Kharrat said, echoing comments made earlier by Brandt in an exclusive interview with Gulf News. Al Kharrat said SAP was unlikely to make acquisitions in the region. "From a local perspective it's more about talent acquisition rather than business acquisition," he added. "We are very open to partnerships. When you talk about cloud solutions and more innovative areas like mobility you have to partner with telcos and data centre providers, but not to the acquisition stage." SAP has identified Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE as possible locations for the training and development institute to train new 2,000 SAP consultants over the next four years. At present, the company works closely with 25 universities in the region, helping to upskill local talent and train new SAP developers and consultants. "We have in excess of 190,000 companies using SAP and we expect more than a billion people a year to come into contact with our systems across the 25 leading industries," Brandt said. According to Forbes, nearly 80 per cent of the top 1,000 companies in the world run SAP applications to power their businesses. Al Kharrat told Gulf News that there was huge potential for growth in Mena as a large number of family-owned and operate businesses needed to build reliable and scalable business software solutions. The Dh1.65 billion investment comes after a year of disruption across the Arab world which, Al Kharrat said, had little long-term impact on the company's performance. He added that more than a 1,000 companies across Mena have migrated to SAP systems. SAP's plan to bolster its business across Mena comes following its best-ever financial year in 2011, with global software revenue increasing 25 per cent to €4 billion (Dh19.26 billion). From gulfnews