German software giant SAP is to greatly boost its research and development team in China, to serve local demands, and also work as a global development base, as the company's expansion in the world's most populous market enters a new stage.

Shang-Ling Jui, managing director of SAP Labs China, said in an interview that his organization is building a new campus in Shanghai, which will host all SAP research units in the city when it is completed.

The new campus will have 1,500 engineers by 2009, compared with the current 200 researchers with SAP China.

Jui said the plan will be carried out in three stages and in every stage, SAP will add 500 engineers. The research team will be expanded to 350 to 450 people next year.

"We want focused and quality growth, rather than only localization," said Jui.

The previous function of the world's largest enterprise software research team in China was mainly to localize software products developed in other parts of the world, but now with local researchers and experience gathered in the Chinese market, it can focus on small and medium-sized business solutions and act as a global centre for SAP.

Some solutions developed in China have been brought to customers in the United States and the Asia-Pacific and the Chinese team is to play a bigger role in the area.

Together with the increasing role of SAP's development team in China, the German giant is also focusing on northern China, as it is already well-established in eastern and southern China.

Klaus Zimmer, president of SAP China, said that in the past three years, his company has been paying more and more attention to northern China.

With the significant role of the government on informatization, SAP will work closely with government departments to promote the adoption of advanced information systems in enterprises.

The German firm signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Northeast China's Jilin Province on Wednesday to set up a foundation to train company executives in the province in enterprise information systems.

He declined to say how much capital the foundation will have, but SAP spends US$100 million a year worldwide to train customers.

The Jilin provincial government also agreed to recommend enterprises for SAP to select as its pilot customers.

The software firm has only three customers in Jilin Province, but Zimmer said he hoped there will be more from the automotive, pharmaceutical, chemical sectors.

On Thursday, SAP also signed a partnership with the Chinese giant China National Overseas Oil Corp (CNOOC) to help the latter's information technology systems.

The German giant has won contracts from two of the top three oil giants-Sinopec and CNOOC.

Zimmer said SAP has maintained an average annual growth of 64 per cent in the past four years in China and it will maintain the same momentum this year.

Source: China Daily