SAP Business ByDesign continues to be rolled out with the firm now claiming 700 customers worldwide, but the roll out is being held back by legal matters.
According to SAP co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe:
"We're limited to eight to 10 countries for Business ByDesign at the moment, which is of course reducing its market opportunity. We need to do localisation on the product in other countries. Localisation is not just about languages, it's about making sure you apply to all the legal requirements of each country. Sometimes that's easy, other times it is complicated. ”
But he admitted:
“ We need to push it into the bigger market, and will come up with an accelerated programme of localisation…We wanted to make sure that we prove to the world that we can run end to end business in the cloud. We are in that respect I think advanced of the competition, which is just becoming available with similar Cloud offerings. ”
According to Techmarketview analyst Angela Eager this legal aspect:
“ …highlights one of the ongoing questions about the suitability of certain applications - like financials – for the multitenant SaaS model. If resource-rich SAP has challenges delivering widespread localised versions, the cost and effort may be beyond smaller specialist Cloud pure-plays. SaaS works for many applications but maybe not for all – while there is little question about the suitability of the technology, it is the economic model that is proving testing and will determine what is offered and where. ”
A recent study by the UK & Ireland SAP User Group revealed that a majority (58%) of respondents said that their Cloud adoption was being slowed by a lack of clarity over SAP's product roadmap, while 27% did not know what SAP's cloud offerings were and the benefits they give.
Snabe confirmed that SAP’s Cloud approach will not be limited to Business ByDesign at the low end but will encompass SAP On-Demand solutions which will be targeted at customers who want to run both on premise and Cloud applications:
“We are offering customers two approaches. They can choose the suite approach where they will be running their entire business in the cloud, or they can go the other way and deploy departmental solutions in sales, career management or expenses.”
Snabe insisted that SAP had a business rather than a technology focus when it comes to strategic decisions:
“We do not see our role as a technology role; success for SAP comes from understanding the business of our customers and delivering business value; it's about adding value, not features. SAP is betting on customer-centric innovation strategy; and innovating faster than the competition has delivered seven consecutive quarters of growth for SAP. With more than 1,500 customers engaging the innovation cycle, it means SAP is able to understand the challenges and get it right first time. ”
tags for SAP: Cloud success inhibited by legal matters
