SAP Acquires IP Telephony, ID Management Vendors

SAP announced a pair of acquisitions, picking up IP telephony and identity management vendors to add new capabilities to its business process applications. Terms of the deals were not disclosed.

SAP said it acquired Wicom Communications, which makes all-IP contact center and enterprise communications software. In addition, the vendor announced the acquisition of MaXWare, a provider of identity management services.

Together, the acquisitions add new capabilities to SAP's enterprise applications and its underlying NetWeaver application integration platform.On the Wicom front, SAP said it will use the company's technology to help customers better integrate communications technologies and business systems across their customer and supplier networks. Wicom's current contact center applications can be deployed in a hosted, on-premises or hybrid deployment model. It can be integrated through Web services with SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

As for MaxWare, SAP will use its identity management technology to help manage and security user identities across its applications and customer business processes. As business applications begin to be delivered in a more service-oriented architecture (SOA) model, fine-grained identity management capability is required to both secure and properly deliver apps to the right users at the right time.