NTT Corporation (NTT) (TYO:9432) and SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced a formation of their strategic alliance that creates a holistic partnership, in which both companies serve as each other’s customers, suppliers, and co-innovators.

NTT and SAP have worked together for over 30 years, supporting the needs of enterprise businesses. Together both companies have been driving customer success, helping enterprises to adopt integrated solutions across hybrid IT infrastructures, security, applications, business technology platform, delivery, and managed services. The deeper relationship enables SAP and NTT to leverage their best capabilities and expertise to deliver solutions that help companies transform into intelligent enterprises.

The strategic alliance creates a new era of digitally connected global value chains and intends to deliver solutions that will support a remote and connected world. These solutions will embrace SAP’s vision of an intelligent enterprise. They will incorporate the best of SAP’s intelligent technologies — the Internet of Things, edge computing, and machine learning, to name a few — with NTT’s industry-leading suite of information and communications technology (ICT) and hybrid cloud capabilities worldwide. These connected value chain solutions, which NTT and SAP will look to co-innovate and jointly go-to-market with, will result in a more unified and automated collaboration across customers, suppliers, retailers, manufacturers, and logistics providers. A digitally connected value chain will help improve performance, transform the customer experience, and enable new business models.

Access to real-time data and analytics will help enterprises become more agile and resilient across the value chain. For example:

• Applications enabling connected sites can help track venue and equipment assets, enhancing workforce safety and equipment reliability, and streamlining business operations
• A connected mobility offering can help track moving assets on the road for reliable logistics and secure transportation delivery
• Traceability delivered by a connected product solution can enable end-to-end value chain visibility, from the container-level down to individual product items

“By redefining our global partnership with SAP, we are taking a significant step toward realizing a wholly digitalized society,” NTT President and CEO Jun Sawada said. “It will allow us to collaborate further to create a better future. Having SAP as our strategic partnership allows us to drive more innovations by combining NTT’s global industry solutions, system integration, ICT infrastructures, multi-hybrid cloud capabilities, security, and managed services with SAP’s top-notch applications and technologies. Our joint go-to-market initiatives will also benefit both companies with optimized service offerings.”

As one of the world’s most innovative companies, delivering services across 190 countries globally, NTT’s vision is to contribute to a wholly digitalized society that connects people, communities, and enterprises to create a better and smarter world for all. NTT will leverage its unique global value proposition to deliver services that complement SAP’s software offerings as a global partner.

“We are entering a new level of collaboration with NTT,” SAP CEO Christian Klein said. “More than ever, companies see the need to transform their businesses not only within their company walls but also across their networks. Based on our solutions, services, and a shared focus on customer success, NTT and SAP will help companies around the globe achieve greater resiliency and agility.”

NTT has selected SAP as its strategic digital transformation partner for its global group of companies.

NTT plans to automate a series of operations as well as advance the group’s management ability through standardizing business processes and enabling data-driven business execution by adopting SAP S/4HANA® and SAP® Ariba® solutions.

SAP has selected NTT as one of its global strategic suppliers to provide a range of services, including infrastructure managed services, application development, and consulting, to help SAP support cloud computing solutions for its customers. Additionally, working with NTT, SAP expects to lower operational costs by simplifying and enhancing the network efficiency of the multiple corporate networks of companies acquired by SAP.