 "Cognizant, SAP Announce Global Services Partnership")
Cognizant, a provider of global IT and business process outsourcing services, and SAP AG have announced a global services partnership in an effort to deliver increased business value by streamlining their engagement and enabling both companies to respond quickly to the ever-changing needs of their customers.
The agreement was signed at SAPPHIRE 2009 by Francisco D’Souza, president and CEO of Cognizant, and Bill McDermott, president of Global Field Operations, SAP AG, and member of the SAP Executive Board.
The agreement marks an important milestone in the relationship between the two companies, which have been working together to enable organisations to realise enhanced business results from their investments in SAP solutions and become stronger businesses. The Cognizant SAP Touchstone Center, set up in 2008 at Cognizant’s facility in Bangalore, India, is already working in co-ordination with SAP Co-Innovation Labs worldwide as the hub of development and innovation at Cognizant that support SAP solutions.
The Touchstone Center and SAP Co-Innovation Labs help to deliver value-added SAP solutions across industries and domains, develop prototypes for various customer scenarios and proof of concepts, perform interoperability studies, and leverage service-oriented architecture (SOA), providing enhanced efficiencies in enterprise applications. Through this extended relationship, Cognizant and SAP plan to expand their global reach.
“Cognizant has consistently demonstrated close alignment with SAP, and its elevation to a global services partner marks a significant milestone in our relationship,” said Zia Yusuf, executive vice president, Global Ecosystem and Partner Group, SAP AG.
With this agreement, Cognizant joins a select group of companies that are a part of the SAP global services partnership program. As a new global services partner, Cognizant will continue to make ahead-of-the-curve investments in developing next-generation SAP platforms, enhancing its SAP consulting practice, creating dedicated SAP sales resources, and supporting marketing activities across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.