SAP claim to be the world’s leading provider of enterprise applications, small and medium enterprise applications, business analytics and enterprise mobility solutions. SAP re-iterated the claim this morning in the Kenyan edition of SAP’s World Tour. Andrew Waititu, SAP regional manager for East Africa says that the tour aims to show the market of the firm’s serious commitment in East Africa alongside sharing SAP’s technical expertise that businesses can use to improve their process. The event took place at Nairobi’s Crowne Plaza and attracted more than 300 participants from over 60 firms including some from Rwanda and Uganda. Dr Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication, officially opened the event.Waititu says that SAP’s got its first customer in the region 16 years ago and has been physically present in Kenya for 11 years. The firm is focus on growing its presence and capacity including that of its partners. This will see SAP investing in growing the number of employees by more than 100%. The firm will also be expanding its physical presence to other countries in the region and already has employees in Rwanda.

The regional manager anticipates a growth of between 60% to 70% in the region, contributing to about 23% of the Africa’s revenue.
SAP partners localize the companies solutions which Waititu says are about 80% ready for the market. Products include enterprise solutions and SAP Business One which is quite popular in the region. SAP Business One is deployed by small and medium enterprises while large enterprises also deploy the same in their branch offices.  Business One currently has more than 10,000 users in Africa.
Ndemo says that the government was working on improving efficiency and would stand to save approximately Ksh 1 billion if it automated its procurement system. This would be done alongside the ongoing digitization of other government agencies and ministries.
The PS urged SAP to review the pricing of its products which locked out many small and medium enterprises that would wish to purchase the software.
Responding to the PS, Frank Cohen, SAP president for Europe, Middle East and Africa region said that SAP had introduced the SAP starter pack, a low cost fully fledged solution that targets firms with five or less employees. Starter pack costs about USD 2,000 and is an end to end solution that contains all the modules available in the enterprise solution.
In an effort to build regional capacity, SAP is in the process of establishing partnerships with higher learning institutions in the region. Cohen says that this is with an aim of having students double up as SAP certified professions by the time they graduate. The program will result in 200 - 300 professionals in Kenya in the next 2 to 3 years. Waititu says that the 2 Kenyan universities are at an advanced stage of talks to set up the program. Rwanda will also have a similar roll out in 2012.
“80% of new software will be cloud services, cloud based software will represent 1/3 of all software sales by 2015 and will be a $160 billion industry by 2020,” says Cohen. He however does not anticipate the cloud replacing all on-premise software, especially core systems such as the billing systems. Eventually, this will result in a hybrid system.
SAP already provides their solutions through the cloud as software-as-a-service. In addition, the purchase of SyBase brought ability for Blackberry and other mobile platform applications to SAP.
The president also highlighted SAP’s developer platform that enabled development of third party applications. SAP was already building and supplying some applications though the expectation was that third party developers would also build applications in the platform. Cohen says that he was interested in opportunities for Kenya to develop global apps as a mobile development hub.
Cohen says that Africa IT spending is “very balanced” and is centered mainly around infrastructure and hardware with very little on packaged solution. This contrasts with mature markets where spending is more towards packaged software. “What is missing is awareness on what customers should invest in,” he says.

The president also insisted that SAP would only be involved in clean business in the continent, and would not charge high prices for contracts because they needed to pay off people.
Europe, Middle East and Africa accounted for USD 6.2 billion for SAP revenue against a global USD 12.5 billion. SAP has more than 109, 000 customers all over the world with more than 50,000 employees in more than 57 countries and is available in 37 countries.
SAP Africa was established in 1993 and now has hubs in East Africa, English West Africa, French speaking Africa, Portuguese speaking Africa and South African Development Committee (SADC).
SAP East Africa will be moving to new offices in their own premises along Riverside Drive in September this year.