SAP is attempting to broaden the appeal of its Business ByDesign Software-as-a-Service offerings by planning to unveil its first line-of-business applications for large enterprises in August, while also encouraging partners to build vertical industry-based packages now.
The enterprise applications giant's aim is to position Business ByDesign as a key platform for running line-of-business offerings in the enterprise space rather than targeting it simply at mid-sized organisations. To this end, it will launch Sales OnDemand in the first half of this year, with other offerings scheduled to follow over time.
But its feature pack 2.6 upgrade, which is available now, also includes the first integration software to enable on-premise Business Suite users to seamlessly deploy Business ByDesign in their subsidiaries. The software will enable financial consolidation between headquarters and their geographically dispersed business units, but further offerings dealing with sales and distribution are also planned for the next feature pack release.
Additional functionality also included for the first time in feature pack 2.6 is a Microsoft Visual Studio-based software developers' kit. It is currently being trialled by selected partners to build project-based add-ons in the first instance, but will be expanded over time to enable the creation of horizontal functionality, followed by vertical industry packages.
Peter Lorenz, SAP's corporate officer and executive vice president for On Demand, said:
“ With feature pack 2.6, we are not only delivering additional value to our customers, but are also providing new opportunities for co-innovation to our partners. As we have now moved to a cycle of delivering a new feature pack every six months, the next big step in our SAP Business ByDesign roadmap will be the general availability of feature pack 3.0 in August.”
SAP has likewise boosted its mobile device support. Users can now access analytics data on the move via a dashboard application, which provides worksheets to arrange and organise reports, add annotations, notes, email and voice notes for collaboration purposes.
