SAP and Siemens Bring Higher Levels of Enterprise Application Security to Customers

VIENNA, Austria, Sept. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Addressing critical market requirements to help customers better secure their IT environments and meet regulatory challenges such as Sarbanes-Oxley, SAP AG and Siemens AG today announced that they have expanded their global strategic alliance through the delivery of a flexible, standards-based identity management solution. Delivered through the SAP NetWeaver(R) platform, Siemens identity management solution, HiPath SIcurity DirX Identity, integrates with SAP applications to help companies automatically centralize and manage their employees' IT access rights across the enterprise. The announcement was made at SAP TechEd(R) '05, being held in Vienna, Austria, September 21-23, 2005.

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In the wake of growing compliance requirements and increasingly divided IT landscapes, the issue of workforce identity management is a growing focus for companies of all sizes worldwide. Companies worldwide are challenged with managing numerous user identity management systems aligned to disparate applications -- a costly and inefficient system that allows for security and compliance weaknesses. Recognizing that corporations need to empower their employees with information without compromising security, SAP and Siemens have come together to offer this integrated solution, allowing customers to easily and effectively manage the access rights of their employees and business partners to a wealth of information and business resources across both SAP(R) and non-SAP solutions. The Siemens HiPath SIcurity DirX Identity solution is highly scalable and integrates easily with SAP NetWeaver, providing one central identity management tool that works across existing heterogeneous IT and application infrastructures.

"The need for identity management extends to many different aspects of enterprise IT infrastructure," said Jamie Lewis, CEO and research chair, Burton Group. "Given the heterogeneous nature of today's IT environments, partnerships between enterprise applications suppliers and identity management vendors are an important component of enterprise integration solutions. The partnership between Siemens and SAP demonstrates this trend and will be especially valuable where the two companies share common customers."

With the integrated solution, each user is represented by a unique digital identity and assigned access privileges to applications and systems based on their job role in the organization. Employees are able to easily and transparently access all systems and applications needed to support their job roles without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. The user's privileges are centrally maintained, continuously updated to reflect changes in the organization, automatically communicated across all relevant systems and withdrawn immediately if necessary. The solution also allows users to maintain audit trails that demonstrate compliance with internal business policies and external regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the German Teleservice Data Protection Act (TDDSG) and the German Law on Corporate Control and Transparency in Financial Transactions (KonTraG).

This solution will further enhance the SAP NetWeaver platform and SAP applications, allowing customers to more easily and effectively manage secure access to applications and business processes across Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA), SAP's blueprint for a business-driven approach to service oriented architecture (SOA).

"We are dedicated to providing our customers powerful solution offerings that deliver a scalable security backbone to support identity management across evolving corporate and IT landscapes," said Henning Kagermann, CEO, SAP. "Siemens identity management solution complements our platform and business solutions in order to drive enhanced competitive advantage for our customer base."

"We are pleased to be part of the successful SAP NetWeaver rollout," said Klaus Kleinfeld, president and CEO, Siemens AG. "Our joint solution helps customers speed up and simplify solution deployment and reduce TCO. HiPath SIcurity DirX complements SAP NetWeaver and mySAP(TM) Business Suite with central identity management for heterogeneous environments. Users are given access to the portal and all applications behind it in one step. Sounds great? It is. We implement it at Siemens."

The cooperation between SAP and Siemens includes product development and integration as well as joint marketing and support. SAP now delivers a demo and test license of the Siemens identity management solution together with its product lines mySAP Business Suite and SAP NetWeaver. SAP and Siemens also use each other's products and solutions internally. This solution is available today.

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software solutions*. Today, more than 28,200 customers in over 120 countries run more than 96,400 installations of SAP(R) software-from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize enterprises to suite solutions for global organizations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver(R) platform to drive innovation and enable business change, mySAP(TM) Business Suite solutions are helping enterprises around the world improve customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations. SAP industry solutions support the unique business processes of more than 25 industry segments, including high tech, retail, public sector and financial services. With subsidiaries in more than 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol "SAP." (Additional information at http://www.sap.com/ )

(*) SAP defines business software solutions as comprising enterprise resource planning and related software solutions such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, product life-cycle management and supplier relationship management.

Siemens Communications

The division Siemens Communications is one of the world's largest players in the telecommunications industry. Siemens is the only enterprise of this industry to offer their customers a complete portfolio from user terminal equipment to complex network infrastructures for enterprises and operators as well as the related services. Siemens Communications is world leader for innovations in convergent technologies, products and services in mobile, standard and corporate networks. The biggest division of Siemens AG is active in more than 160 countries and achieved a turnover worth some 18 billion Euros in fiscal year 2004 (30 September) with about 60,000 employees.

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NOTE: SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serve informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary.

For customers interested in learning more about SAP products: Global Customer Center: +49-180-534-34-24 United States Only: 1-800-872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727) For more information, press only: SAP Lindsey Held, +1-650-320-3542, lindsey.held@sap.com, PDT Alicia Lenze, +49-6227-7-40445, alicia.lenze@sap.com, CET SAP Press Office, +49-6227-7-46315, CET; +1-610-661-3200, press@sap.com, EDT Rachel Allen, Burson-Marsteller, +1-415-591-4101, rachel_allen@sfo.bm.com, PDT Siemens Ralf Knoeringer, +49-0-172-522-9705, ralf.knoeringer@siemens.com, CET