"Microsoft South Africa has officially opened a Competence Centre at the SAP Southern Africa premises in Johannesburg. This centre has been opened as a direct result of the success of the two existing centres in Redmond in the United States and Walldorf in Germany," says Mark Hill, managing director of Microsoft South Africa.
"The South African Microsoft SAP Competence Centre will be manned by Microsoft SAP Basis certified consultants. We identified the need for a South African Competence Centre and the facility is set up to test new product releases, allow for stronger involvement with hardware partners, encourage greater integration and development work that is of direct benefit to our customers" says Hill.
Microsoft South Africa and SAP Southern Africa have a cooperative relationship that provides customers with integrated business application packages and platforms that ensure a smooth transition of technology into the future.
"Experience has shown that Microsoft and SAP share the same philosophy in many respects, whether it be with regard to state-of-the-art products, customer service, partnerships or technological breakthroughs," says George Oertel, managing director of SAP South Africa.
"The close partnership between Microsoft and SAP, fuelled by the complementary nature of our philosophies and respective market segments, has resulted in an integrated system software platform for R/3 from a single source. This partnership enables business users to easily adapt to the rapidly changing world of new, improved technology, thus giving them the leading edge," says Mark Hill.
Since Microsoft Windows NT became available as a platform for R/3 in 1994, the combination has steadily gained popularity and is firmly establishing itself as the operating system of choice for client/server solutions. Today, almost 50% of new SAP R/3 installations run on Microsoft Windows NT with the total number of combinations worldwide already topping the 5300 mark.
The combination of core skills, with Microsoft specialising in developing desktop, server and development tools and SAP's long, successful tradition in the development of business application packages, means this cooperation works to the benefit of the customer. The resulting high-performance, flexible and user-friendly systems can be administered and upgraded with a minimum of investment and expense.
It is clear that this partnership will prove to be beneficial to the enterprise and is already making a valuable contribution to the achievement of their goals. This is through integrated business solutions designed to the highest of standards on the basis of client/server technology and Microsoft Office and BackOffice platforms.
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