The German business applications giant said that partners like Cisco Systems, Deloitte, Protiviti, TechniData and VitalSpring Technologies are starting to rally around its new GRC suite of applications built from technology acquired from Virsa Systems Inc a year ago.
All these partners are now poised to join the Council which will provide a forum for business and IT professionals to collaborate over strategies, technologies and services that address GRC challenges and develop industry best practices.
SAP’s Vrisa acquisition last April laid the foundation for a trio of new SOA-based GRC applications — GRC Repository, GRC Process Control, GRC Risk Management – and also prompted SAP to set up a dedicated GRC business unit last May
SAP already taps into Cisco’s service oriented network architecture to push its GRC products in North America.
TechniData and VitalSpring also leverage the SAP NetWeaver platform to build industry-specific GRC applications.
Deloitte and Protiviti are long-time SAP partners and engage in joint development, sales and marketing initiatives.
SAP said that customers like Chevron and Adobe have also expressed an interest in participating in the Executive Advisory Council.
GRC relates to the planning, implementation, monitoring and analysis of internal controls for business operations to ensure compliance with regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II.
Currently more than 2,000 companies worldwide use SAP’s GRC applications.
According to AMR Research the GRC software and service market is expected to grow to $30bn by the end of 2007, a 9% year-over-year increase.
