SAP and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will always have Paris. In a move that SAP says "underscores its commitment to partnering to help its customers adopt enterprise SOA," the company has announced  an expanded global partnership with TCS. The announcement came at SAP's international user conference in Paris.

TCS joins a small group of "the market's largest consultancies" in joining the SAP Global Partner - Services program. As a new global services partner, TCS will invest in joint marketing resources and strategic planning with SAP.

TCS says its services practice for SAP applications currently employs more than 2,200 people worldwide, with significant investments in building composite applications that are powered by the SAP NetWeaver platform. The company is strengthening its field teams serving SAP customers globally and also is building competencies through investment in 20,000 training days over the next two years.

"Strong partnerships and engagement models are key to helping our customers adopt enterprise SOA," said Léo Apotheker (pictured above), president and member of the executive board, SAP. "SAP works closely with its services partners to jointly develop solutions that address changing business needs. TCS is a leading systems integrator and application services partner for enterprises globally. Its domain, technology and global implementation capabilities, which leverages its Network Delivery Model, opens new opportunities to address customer needs and the organization's proven track record is something we look forward to leveraging across the globe."

TCS is also actively working with SAP to develop a variety of services that address specific customer pain points across many different industries and markets. As an SAP global services partner, TCS collaborates with SAP and many of its ISV partners to develop and market specific solutions and services for the hospitality industry globally. TCS will also serve as a source of international deployment of SAP Business One to subsidiaries of corporate enterprises and apply its expertise in manufacturing to implement adaptive manufacturing solutions for customers worldwide. In addition, TCS has signed up for the "BPO Services Powered by SAP" program and is building a platform to provide human capital management (HCM) business process outsourcing (BPO) services that are based on mySAP ERP.

"Tata Consultancy Services sees tremendous opportunity to help customers in the adoption of enterprise SOA for growth," said N. Chandrasekaran (pictured left), head of Global Sales and Operations, Tata Consultancy Services. "This global partnership will also help drive customer upgrades to mySAP ERP in target verticals, using TCS' innovation labs to build and showcase solution accelerators and composites. We are also pleased to announce that we are now a member of the Enterprise Services Community and already have some of our assets in government and manufacturing verticals on the SAP NetWeaver platform."