German software company SAP, AG started a co-innovation lab ( COIL) in Bangalore in April 2009, to collaborate with technology, service and software companies to develop new solutions. It is the third such location after Palo Alto, California and Tokyo, Japan and already employs 4,200 people.
By 2010, COIL completed 24 projects and produced 14 solutions ready to go to market, according to Axel Henning Saleck, head of the global SAP co-innovation lab network. Saleck said SAP has partnered with 11 technology companies including Wipro, Cisco, Arteria Technologies, MindTree and others to help take ideas from the concept to development and eventually will take them to market.
The lab hosts a heterogeneous data center, integrating hardware and infrastructure software, a hands-on environment where members can work on proof-of-concepts and build and test new business processes. The promotes applications and technology solutions to SAP customers. For example, the Real Estate Sales and Tenancy business, typically in emerging markets, is largely a manual process with system interactions pushed more as a back-end activity. MindTree Ltd, a regional SAP Service partner, with expertise in implementations of SAP Real Estate solutions has worked in COIL to build a mobile application that automates sales and leasing for real estate.
