SAP brings global University Alliances Program to APAC
ConvergenceAsia staff
22/04/2008

SAP Asia Pacific Japan has brought its University Alliances Program to the Asia Pacific region. Students at Asia’s top schools will now have access to the same training benefiting the more than 150,000 students from 800 universities that have already participated in the SAP programme across 36 countries in the US and Europe.

SAP, the provider of business software, is launching the programme out of Singapore. SAP expects to have made S$7 million in contributions to the industry in Singapore as a result of the programme by 2010.

The University Alliances Program promotes scientific and technical education in tertiary institutions by providing students and lecturers around the world with access to SAP software training.

“With the talent crunch facing the infocomm industry today, SAP finds it a need to help groom talents to meet the growing manpower demands of the industry. Also, we feel that it is absolutely necessary that these future IT specialists be trained in a manner that will prepare them for the real world,” said Geraldine McBride, President & CEO, SAP Asia Pacific Japan.

“Through the University Alliances Program, SAP hopes to reach over 300 universities in Asia Pacific by 2010 and to help establish a good talent pool from where suitable expertise and knowledge can be drawn from by the industry.”

The SAP training courses lead to student certifications and eventual hiring by SAP, SAP partners and customers.

In Asia Pacific Japan region, the University Alliances Program will have its University Competency Center (UCC) hosted out of Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia.

The UCC will take care of all the technical hosting aspects by operating the software, plus supporting the teaching and training of users.

Currently, the programme has drawn interest from over 100 universities in Australia & New Zealand, China, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. This includes Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and National University of Singapore (NUS) in Singapore, Australian National University (ANU), University of Sydney and Melbourne University in Australia, IIM Kohizode, Xavier Labour Research Institute, Jamshedpur, IIT Kanpur in India; Waseda University, Yokohama National University and Aoyama Gakuin in Japan; and Shanghai JiaoTong University, Tsinghua University, in China.

Plans are also underway to roll out the programme in more tertiary institutions in those countries as well as in Malaysia, and Vietnam.

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