UPDATED 07:38 EDT / NOVEMBER 02 2012

SAP Revamps Social Enterprise Strategy with Jam, Slew of New Apps

Business intelligence vendor SAP has been looking for ways to become more competitive with the likes of Salesforce.com, and it apparently found the answer in Jam. The enterprise social networking solution that SAP gained through the acquisition of SuccessFactors last year will play a huge role in a revitalized big attempt to gain a major foothold in this market.

Jam, which is getting several major user experience enhancements, will serve as the foundation for “”value-oriented packages” that will target specific use cases within the enterprise. SAP touts this approach as a much more viable alternative to unfocused company-wide roll outs.

One of the apps that will sit on top of Jam is StreamWork, a homegrown collaboration product didn’t live up to expectations as a standalone product. It’s not clear whether this sharing functionality will be included in the solution or offered as an add-on for extra fees.

“SAP Jam is the go-forward platform,” Sameer Patel, VP and GM for SAP’s social software solutions group, said in a statement. “We’re basically building everything on the Jam foundation.” SAP has “re-created StreamWork elements” on Jam.”

SAP CRM, Sales OnDemand and Financials OnDemand will also be integrated with the platform.

Also this week, the vendor unveiled Social OnDemand – a monitoring solution for marketers – and SAP Social Media Analytics software, a big data engine that taps into feeds from popular networks.

Social and analytics are both becoming bigger parts of SAP’s business. Last month the company launched NetWeaver Cloud, a HANA-based offering that represents the firm’s first entry into the PaaS market. The in-memory database platform was also available for AWS users, a big step forward towards making data analytics available outside the enterprise.


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