SAP joins Yahoo! in portal partnership

NEWS The platform is designed to allow companies to provide customers and partners with a single point of access to applications and services from Yahoo! and SAP, as well as third party services. SAP also today unveiled its new subsidiary enterprise portal company, SAP portal, which incorporates SAP's latest acquisition TopTier software. At today's launch Hasso Plattner, CEO at SAP, called the new venture a "move forward" for SAP, and distanced the company from the B2B vendors it is commonly associated with, including partner Commerce One, saying that B2B had lost its sense of "gravity". On the new venture he said: "It is not realistic for SAP to think we can shift 99 per cent of enterprise software. We'd like to do that but now it's more like 30-40 per cent. A lot of the information out there is on the internet, that's where Yahoo! comes in." Tim Koogle, CEO of Yahoo!, said: "The thing we're doing with SAP is truly significant. It combines our worldwide reach and it makes the workplace a more attractive place to work, and a more efficient place for our customers." The new solution is due for release in the second quarter of 2001.