SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) announced its intention to acquire software and relevant assets from datango AG, a leading provider of workforce performance support software.The transaction, scheduled to close during the first quarter of 2012, will broaden the SAPR software portfolio in the education space, providing customers with powerful, easy-to-use software tools to help address their end-to-end user training, knowledge management and performance support challenges.
The datango solution provides powerful content development, translation and deployment capabilities for electronic training, documentation, and user support. SAP ownership of this asset will enable the company to develop valuable integration with other SAP tools, leading to additional value for SAP customers. Features of datango's Electronic Performance Support (EPSS), including superior object recognition, true re-recording, extensive media support and modest IT requirements, along with existing SAP offerings in the education software space, will help SAP customers to lower their total cost of ownership (TCO), significantly facilitate end-user enablement in a scalable way and accelerate end-useradoption.
Headquartered in Berlin, datango was founded in 1999 and holds a long-standing and productive relationship with SAP. In recent years, the datango software has been successfully deployed in the SAPR Business ByDesignT solution.Together, SAP and datango will capitalize on a trend in education software toward creating applications that contain tools for authors, such as e-collaboration, along with self-help scenarios and auto-teaching functions.
"The workforce performance tools market has become increasingly strategic and critical to our customers' success, and datango is a proven leader in this space," said Markus Schwarz, senior vice president and global head of SAP Education. "By having its own product in this market, SAP can now deliver and accelerate innovations and produce robust content for our customers in the future."
The transaction is subject to the usual regulatory approvals.