Software company SAP has launched a University Alliance programme in Malta, through which it will offer training in its products.
“These courses are already offered in 1,200 universities around the world. SAP solutions are used by 253,000 customers in 180 countries, so students who graduate with prior knowledge of them are in a better position when they seek work,” Steve Tzikakis, SAP South Europe general manager, told Times of Malta Business.
Further details of the programme will be announced later. SAP is also planning to offer cash prizes through a competition for students and start-ups who create new solutions which it feels can be commercialised.
The initiatives are part of a drive by the company to increase its profile in Malta, a decision taken six months ago.
Mr Tzikakis, who was in Malta for the opening of Alert’s new office, said that SAP has restructured its regional groupings and Malta is now with nine other countries which have similar situations: a government-led digital agenda, but potential to increase take-up of SAP solutions in both the public and private sectors.
Malta’s digital agenda was launched last week and Mr Tzikakis was full of praise for it.
“It is very refreshing and very much in line with what we would have expected from a government that has ranked so well with its IT initiatives,” he said.
“We were pleasantly surprised at the Alert launch to hear the Prime Minister say that technology-driven innovation is at the forefront of efforts to combat social problems such as the lack of skills in youths, the pension gap and improving efficiency in public administration.”
“We strongly believe that SAP can help, especially with efficiency and with government/citizen inter-action, as we have already done with 52 per cent of the countries around the world. Take-up in Malta is not good – especially for back-office functions – and we plan to change that. We are already supporting bidders for the new financial and accounting system tender. And there is a lot more that we can help with, such as budgeting and procurement systems. It is not enough for the private sector to innovate. The public sector needs to innovate too ....”
We prefer to use our resources to develop than to advertise the company
He pointed out that 10 of the top 10 countries ranked for competitiveness and for innovation use SAP solutions.
SAP was founded 1972, the year that the last Apollo mission landed on the moon, powered by a 32KB computer.
“Things have changed!” he laughed. “There are birthday cards with more computer power than that now!”
But as computing power and memory got more powerful and cheaper, companies were faced with an overload of data. SAP was the first company to integrate database management into its solutions so that companies no longer needed a separate system.
The company has a product called Hana, which is rapidly becoming the underlying techno-logy for all SAP applications. It is a staggering 10,000 times faster than traditional databases. For example, analysis of human DNA which would have taken three weeks can now be done in less than three minutes.
“It allows companies to analyse not only their own but also external data. For example, you can track weather, traffic and storage space to work out how many drinks to distribute to outlets,” he explained.
Hana is part of a new SAP strategy adopted in 2009, which saw the company expand from its dominance in the field of apps to business intelligence and mobile, databases and cloud computing. This is possible because of the huge investment in R&D, which utilised 28 per cent of SAP’s staff, one of the highest rates in the sector.
“We prefer to use our resources to develop than to advertise the company,” he explained.
SMEs make up 80 per cent of SAP’s customers, which Mr Tzikakis said was understandable as the fewer employees a company has, the more automation it requires.
“It is better to dedicate your employees to core operations. SMEs spend more on their digital agenda than large companies do, as a proportion of their turnover,” he said.