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SAP acquires Crossgate, eyes B2B e-commerce networks

By | September 20, 2011, 7:11am PDT

Summary: SAP was already an investor in Crossgate. Now it owns the B2B e-commerce network provider.

SAP said Tuesday that it will acquire Crossgate, which provides hosted B2B integration services.

With the move, SAP is looking to provide a market to connect customers to business partners. In a nutshell, Crossgate builds services that allow multiple trading partners to exchange data even if partners have different technology platforms.

In a statement, SAP said that it is looking to automate processes and streamline enterprise e-commerce.

Sound familiar? It should. SAP’s acquisition of Crossgate appears to be a direct threat to Ariba. Jason Busch at the Spend Matters blog noted that SAP was becoming increasingly competitive with Ariba. Busch argued that SAP and Oracle are likely to build in transactional connections into their suites.

Crossgate, based in Munich, Germany, is already a SAP partner. SAP invested in Crossgate in 2008 and resells its content engine. Overall, Crossgate has about 40,000 business partners that are linked together via e-invoicing services.

Terms of the Crossgate deal weren’t disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close Nov. 1.

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Topics

B2B E-commerce, Network, SAP AG, Crossgate, B2B, Mergers & Acquisitions, Corporate Law, E-business/E-Commerce, Internet, Investment, Finance, Business Operations, Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

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Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

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