Information Week: Dell And SAP Expand Partnership

Update: Benjamin Curtis to run SAP consulting division

Walldorf, Germany—In a surprise move, Dell Computers and SAP AG announced that, under terms of a new partnership agreement, Benjamin Curtis, the actor who portrayed Dell sales associate ‘Steven’ in Dell’s commercials, will be heading SAP Consulting. In a post-agreement press conference, CEO Michael Dell stated: “As soon as Dell and SAP agreed to migrate enterprise clients from UNIX platforms to Dell-branded Linux or Windows platforms, we realized that we faced a hard sell both to investors and SAP clients, all of whom are aware of the wealth of competing hardware options that become available when a company shifts its IT infrastructure… that’s where Steven— I mean Mr. Curtis— comes in.” SAP CEO Henning Kagermann agreed, “Just hours after we announced this move, we received several calls from established US clients as well as potential customers. The NYPD just called us and we think that they may want to shift over to one of our SAP tracking platforms.” While Curtis was unavailable for comment, specialists at Gibory, SAP’s advertising agency, were enthused. “Steven was noted for his ability to state the obvious and here we will be dealing with the obvious need for Dell-based SAP enterprise solutions.” Emmanuelle Collin, marketing director at Gibroy, noted that they were already working on Mr. Curtis’ own press release “We are thinking of using ‘Dude, you’ve got a company’,” said Collin, “but 'Dude, you need an SAP strategic organizational realignment in order to develop metrics for measuring project success’ has a certain ring to it.”

- posted by JB @ 5:10 AM