SAP STARTS PORTALS UNIT, COLLABORATES WITH YAHOO!

SAP STARTS PORTALS UNIT, COLLABORATES WITH YAHOO!    SAP AG, based in Walldorf, Germany, a provider of software solutions, and Yahoo! Inc., based in Santa Clara, Calif., an Internet commerce and media company, said Wednesday they have formed a partnership to develop business in the enterprise portal market.
   Under the agreement, SAP and Yahoo! “will work together to develop a joint enterprise portal and market it directly to their customers,” as well as through their respective sales channels, according to a SAP statement.
   SAP simultaneously announced the formation of SAP Portals Inc., “a new company dedicated to developing and marketing open-enterprise portal and business intelligence units,” a SAP spokesman said.
   SAP named Shai Agassi as chief executive officer of SAP Portals, which will initially have 700 employees and be based in Palo Alto, Calif. Agassi was CEO, president, and chief technology officer of TopTier Software, which SAP AG said last month it would acquire.
   SAP Portals will combine the assets of three units of the SAP group: TopTier Software; the current SAP AG general business unit involved with the mySAP Workplace enterprise portal and with mySAP business intelligence solutions, and eSAP Gmbh, a SAP services subsidiary focusing on enterprise portal and e-commerce projects.
   “The enterprise portal will provide all users with one entry point to a wide variety of structured and unstructured information,” SAP said. “SAP Portals will work with both SAP and Yahoo! to create a portal platform with open access to applications, services, and rich personalized external content.”
   That solution, “in terms of scalability and application integration … will combine content and functionality with an intuitive user interface,” said Hasso Plattner, co-chairman of the executive board, CEO and co-founder of SAP AG.