SAP: Businesses to adopt 'collaborative' SOA

SAP has said collaborative working through service-oriented architecture technology represents the future for businesses.

Speaking at the opening day of SAP's Sapphire conference in Berlin, the company's co-chief executive, Henning Kagermann, said collaboration is the "most important market transition going on in business".

Kagermann added that service-oriented architecture (SOA) has an important part to play in this. "The entry ticket to manage these networks is SOA. It makes you network-ready," he said.

Kagermann said: "It's about connecting systems. We have to move out of our comfort zone and manage these networks collaboratively."

Kagermann explained that, in the current economic climate, businesses want to "innovate quickly and scale up profitably", meaning collaborative business networks will become more important.

He added: "It's about making fast turns without losing momentum. The fast will win in challenging times. We have to close the gap between strategy and execution. We have to transform the way our people work."