Network Management

SAP Acquires IP Telephony, ID Management Vendors

Deals muddy the competitive waters as SAP partners and competes with other giants like Microsoft and Cisco.

May 14, 2007

2 Min Read

SAP's move into IP telephony isn't surprising: VoIP means that telephony is essentially just software, attracting interest in VoIP from Microsoft and open-source developers. At the same time, telephony vendors such Avaya and Siemens have been moving into SAP's application integration space, offering platforms that aim to integrate telephony apps into a SOA.
However, telephony and related real-time applications don't easily fit into the messaging-based architectures that most SOA products still use. The move into IP telephony and the strengthening of its ID-management offerings also brings SAP into more direct competition with its partners Microsoft and Cisco--with both of which it announced joint products less than a month ago.
Andy Dornan
NWC Technology Editor

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.

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