SAP goes ASP after airline demand takes off

NEWS Karl Moore, spokesman for Sita - a provider of global telecomms and information solutions to the air transport industry - said: "We already run passenger and transport linking and tracing services worldwide. In a sense, they're ASP services so it's a logical progression. But the real reason is that our users asked us to." The new venture will offer MySAP.com modules for e-procurement, finance, human resources and maintenance and engineering. Customers will be smaller national and regional airlines that lack the capital to invest heavily in IT or have underinvested in the past. The move was welcomed by bigger rival CommerceOne which runs Exostar, the B2B exchange for the major companies of the aerospace industry. Patrick Meyer, marketing director EMEA at CommerceOne, said: "The small and medium airlines are a niche market, but this will be fantastic for the companies. Bringing them the proven SAP technology is just great for them." Sita has 1,800 customers including airlines, equipment suppliers, maintenance services, airports, etc. Among Sita's many global firsts was the development of a working network with packet switching and using it to handle data traffic in real time. It now serves over 700 members, comprising 548 airlines, all major computer reservation systems, including airports, aerospace companies, air-freight organizations and governments worldwide, and it now jointly owns and operates the world's largest private international data and voice communications network which reaches 220 countries and territories worldwide.