At Lotusphere IBM and SAP Announce Alloy, First Jointly Developed Software Product

ORLANDO, FL .- LOTUSPHERE -- Today at the annual Lotusphere conference, IBM (NYSE:IBM) and SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) announced the planned March release for their first joint software product called Alloy(TM). At Lotusphere, IBM and SAP showcased successful early results of this product with several customers, including Colgate-Palmolive and Arla Foods.

Alloy connects IBM Lotus Notes software with SAP Business Suite to get people to the core of their business. Alloy is a new style of software application that presents information and data from SAP applications in the context of what millions of business users are familiar with -- the Lotus Notes collaboration software desktop. This will make it easier for professionals to do their jobs and enhance the investments they have made in their SAP applications.

“We expect the new Alloy software from IBM and SAP to help us drive down IT management costs and boost productivity by allowing employees easy access to SAP reports, procurement, data and product life cycle management tools directly from their Lotus Notes e-mail,” said Tom Greene, CIO, Colgate-Palmolive.

“Alloy will enable our senior management immediate access to critical information residing in our SAP system directly from Lotus Notes,” said Claus Qvistgaard, senior director, Arla Foods amba, Global IT. “This will enable them to improve the quality and timeliness of their decisions, leading to superior business outcomes for Arla Foods.”

IBM Lotus and SAP have thousands of mutual customers who have been asking for the functionality that Alloy will provide. The majority of IBM’s top 100 customers also use SAP offerings.

“In today’s challenging business environment, companies need to identify and respond to operational changes more quickly,” said Bob Picciano, general manager, IBM Lotus Software. “Tools that provide business people with seamless access to expertise, processes and information streamline work and improve productivity. Alloy by IBM and SAP is designed to help individuals and companies work more efficiently to produce better business outcomes.”

For more than 35 years, IBM and SAP have collaborated to bring joint customers offerings to improve business efficiency at more than 13,000 client sites for millions of users.

“In today’s economy, more than ever, our customers want to maximize the value derived from their existing investments,” said Michael Reh, senior vice president and general manager, SAP. “Joint Lotus Notes and SAP customers can do that by leveraging Alloy. With Alloy, organizations can bring people, processes and information together in one place for business users thereby increasing adoption and providing opportunities to further improve return on investment on the technology solutions that run their businesses.”

Alloy supports SAP workflows, reporting and analytics, and the use of roles from within the Lotus Notes client. The product ships with a set of standard workflows and reports. These standard elements may be customized using standard Lotus Domino and SAP tools to reflect a company’s unique processes. IBM Global Business Services, SAP practitioners, Lotus Domino Business Partners and other global and regional systems integrators will be available to customize Alloy. Alloy implementations will take advantage of the collaborative and off-line capabilities inherent in Lotus Notes and Domino products.

The initial release will be sold by both companies.

SAP Business Suite is a comprehensive family of adaptive business applications, providing best-in-class functionality built for complete integration, industry-specific capability, unlimited scalability, and easy collaboration over the Internet. Individually, SAP Business Suite applications help customers manage their most critical business processes. Collectively, they form a tightly integrated suite that adds value to every facet of large and small organizations, including banks, hospitals, retail establishments, government agencies and a variety of other businesses, and their external value chains.

Lotus Notes and Domino enterprise collaboration software transforms the inbox into an integrated workspace. It brings together email, calendar, instant messaging, productivity tools such as IBM Lotus Symphony, collaborative applications, and the ability to build and deploy customer business or third-party applications, including help desk, customer relationship management, sales force, discussion forms and blogs.

Celebrating their 20th anniversary in 2009, Lotus Notes and Domino products have 145 million licensed users worldwide. Companies of all sizes, industries and technology lineages are embracing the latest version as the most comprehensive and versatile open collaboration platform they have used.