SAP just opened another co-innovation lab, this time in Singapore. The lab is its 21st globally, and the fourth in the Asia-Pacific region.
The German software giant hopes it will allow member organizations to have a space to experiment with different hardware and software combinations, and provides its cloud infrastructure to them to back this. The aim, it says, is to encourage the creation of new technologies with the environment. The Singapore facility has the support of other vendors Cisco, Intel, NetApp and VMware, who will make their products available to members.
The co-innovation lab sits in a larger facility that SAP established in 2011 here, called the Global Research and Business Incubation center in Singapore, which serves as the company’s Asia-Pacific research headquarters.
While today was the official opening of the co-innovation space, some startups in the country have been testing out the space, said SAP. YFind Technologies, based in the island state, is one that has used the lab with its indoor location positioning product. YFind’s co-founder, Melvin Yuan, said it set up its system in the lab to find a way for SAP to integrate its broader retail software products with YFind’s technology. YFind says it has a way to lay foot traffic analytics over the location data, which can be used to reach out with marketing campaigns.
The first such lab was opened in Palo Alto in 2007, and had vendors like Citrix Systems and F5 coming in on the infrastructure side, as well as Cisco, Intel and NetApp again.