SAP today launches a digital magazine called Digitalist, designed to reach C-level executives and cover topics around the challenges businesses face in the digital economy.

The quarterly publication is available on iPads and Android tablets, as well as an online presence.

"The Digitalist is an evolution of our content-marketing strategy that we've been pursuing for a few years," said Jeff Woods, VP-SAP global marketing. "It's part of an ongoing journey SAP has had with our marketing strategy to have a digital presence that is very much focused on an outside-in view from our customers' perspective -- what are the questions they are asking and issues they are trying to deal with?"

In early 2012, SAP launched a blog called SAP Business Innovation, written by SAP executives, customers and outside experts. The blog was designed to provide thought-leadership content around technology topics such as mobility, cloud computing, big data and real-time analytics.

Now, the Business Innovation blog has been wrapped into the Digitalist site online, and the focus has been expanded to include more content for the C-suite.

"We created the Digitalist magazine to help C-level executives be leaders in the digital economy, and ultimately transform their organizations and the world itself into a better-run world," Mr. Woods said.

The strategy fits into SAP's overall "Run Simple" positioning, he added.

The Digitalist is headed up by Editor in Chief Elana Varon, who was previously executive editor at CIO magazine. The articles are written primarily by outside contributors, including business and technology journalists, as well as by some SAP subject-matter experts.

"The goal for the stories, as was the goal for a lot of the content on Business Innovation, is to step back from products and even specific technologies and talk about the business issues of using technology," Ms. Varon said.

The cover story of the premier issue, "The Chip in Your Bread," is about how executives can run their businesses in a connected world. Other articles include "How 3D Printing Will Disrupt Manufacturing," and "Engaged Employees Are Your Business."

"We are looking at what is happening inside companies -- not just what early adopters or disruptive companies are doing, but examples of practical applications of a variety of technologies, in companies of any size," Ms. Varon said.

There's also an Opportunity Matrix infographic, with bite-sized pieces on trending technologies such as autonomous vehicles, drones and gene testing.

"This [feature] is more consumable to the executive audience -- these are technologies they need to know about but probably won't change business today," Mr. Woods said.

SAP's primary goal with the publication is to provide thought leadership content, and to stimulate conversations with customers and prospects that can be used to further engage them, whether in sales calls or at live events, he added.

"For us, it's about the quality of the conversation we're having with customers," Mr. Woods said.

SAP will use metrics such as the number of subscribers and time spent engaging with content to measure the effectiveness of the publication, he said. It will also drive users to the online site, where they can download additional content such as white papers and research.