SAP's Business ByDesign Aimed at SMB Market
Richard Adhikari reports in InternetNews.com that SAP plans to move aggressively forward with its SaaS offering, Business ByDesign, and is targeting the SMB customer in his article SAP to Innovate Heavily in SMB On-Demand Suite - updated - Business intelligence to pervade enterprise software giant's forthcoming products. It appears from some of the comments quoted from the SAP executive suite that the word “aggressive” is only the tip of the iceberg:
Henning Kagermann, co-CEO stated:
“When you come to challenging times, you have to take risks. Business ByDesign is not just about product, we also want to focus on profitability, and in the volume business you have to do a lot of innovation to make the business profitable”
Jim Snabe, head of SAP's business solutions and technology, stated further:
“You can look at it from two angles. One is how to convert money into ideas; the other is how to convert ideas into money”
In addition to the predicted new innovation of this SaaS offering which includes CRM, SAP will integrate its Business Intelligence (“BI”) technology into the business suite as a direct result of its purchase of Business Objects last year. This will bring the analytics portion into the new offering. Customers will be able to analyze their historical projections as well as future projections.
So when should we expect this new business suite to be rolled out. SAP says to look for it by next year. Just exactly when next year isn’t quite clear.
In related SAP news: In a move to emphasize its focus on profitability and a bid to match the pricing of Oracle, its chief competitor, SAP customers are none-too-happy with the recent price increase for its enhanced maintenance “Enterprise Support”. For the full story see SAP CEO Defends Price Hikes as Customers Gripe - In its drive to become more profitable, has the enterprise software vendor stirred up a hornet's nest? Kagermann defended his company’s actions by stating:
"We're offering a new service which is much larger than before, has a certain value and a certain price. The cost for us is higher, and so we believe it's a fair price."
