SaaS a-application from SAP: demand is 100 times lower than the plan

SAP Business ByDesign, ERP system "on demand" for SMB companies, was widely announced in 2007 and had to promote gaining of the SaaS market by software giant. Representation of a system Henning Kagermann holding a post of the CEO of SAP commented whereas on "the most important announcement in the career".

However, having begun with 20 clients within pilot projects, SAP defines number of the companies clients using SAP Business ByDesign now as "about 100". Roland Van Breukelen, a team member of SAP Business ByDesign in Great Britain, called such approach "a konroliruyemy output of a system to the market".

The low number of clients does not indicate obvious problems of corporate applications where the target number of clients can be small. However the SaaS model assumes attraction of a large number of clients.

So went not so? Very slow distribution of SAP Business ByDesign indicates badly selected strategy or the problem has more fundamental character?

According to Dale Vayl (Dale Vile), the analyst of research IT company Freedom Dynamics, in the company never saw high rates of the SaaS market for difficult business applications. Though simpler applications, such as CRM system, are suitable for use according to the SaaS model, only the few companies use the placed applications.

According to Mr. Vayl, SAP just got to a trap of optimistic experts, but did not listen to the clients and did not consider objective data of the market.

It is impossible to tell that SAP is ready to recognize the defeat. The company released the latest version of SAP Business ByDesign in August of the current year and planned release of the next version for the beginning of 2011.

According to Roland Van Brekelen, "interest and acceptance of a system was very positive". Support of mobile devices, addition with analytical opportunities in real time and an opportunity for work in the mode of collective lease made a system very attractive to clients.