When i was at SAPPHIRE i spent some time at the Cognizant enclosure and we got talking about the testing center that they had setup for SAP, recently i Came across this IDC News Flash titeled " Cognizant Solidifies Its Footprint in Testing Services with the SAP NetWeaver Test Center" In March of this year Cognizant announced the opening of an SAP NetWeaver Test Center, The test center, was to be part of Cognizant's SAP Center of Excellence (CoE), providing testing services to SAP on all product lines as well as to ISVs that are developing products on the NetWeaver platform.

Cognizant's testing services practice experienced strong growth in 2005, nearly doubling its size, and the company expects this trend to continue throughout 2006. According to Cognizant, it plans to harvest existing skill sets within the company around testing, Java, and product development as well as recruit resources where needed to support the test center.

Couple of points to note in the news flash:
- it further validates and showcases Cognizant's SAP capabilities to the marketplace
- With close to 1,000 resources dedicated to its SAP Practice, Cognizant has built up a substantial SAP-centric business and thus is well positioned to capitalize on growing demand around NetWeaver and the mySAP business suite.
- IDC believes that Cognizant's relationship as a partner and as SAP's third-party testing center should help to strengthen Cognizant's knowledge of NetWeaver and add to its credibility as an SAP integrator
- further validates the growing demand for third-party testing services. IDC has witnessed a growing interest in procuring testing services from external services firms
- Working so closely with SAP also gives Cognizant a competitive advantage in application outsourcing (AO) services for SAP.
- Because many applications built on NetWeaver are geared toward smaller companies, the experience with the NetWeaver ISV partner ecosystem may also give Cognizant a leg up against its offshore competition in the race to win midmarket customers.

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Prashanth Rai