SAP prepares a cloud to expand its SaaS offering
Modeled on Force.com from Salesforce, SAP is developing its offer cloud to create and support a partner ecosystem around its ERP for SME, SAP Business ByDesign.
It was during a European event dedicated to SMEs that Zinow Rainer, senior vice president in charge of SAP's SME strategy has leaked information: "We will provide a development environment for SAP Business ByDesign."
Not only will it soon be possible to develop applications for SAP Business ByDesign, but it will run on the platform Saas SAP. Finally, a marketplace to be launched for the publishing partners can market their achievements.
SAP is present in the market for Saas solutions for SMEs since the launch of SAP Business ByDesign in 2007. If the commercial debut of its ERP system were difficult, SAP believes more than ever in its offer and has recently unveiled at Sapphire 2009 version 2.0. An important development in terms of user interface and functionality.
But it was in 2010 that SAP Business ByDesign will know its true revolution. ERP giant will expand the number of countries where the offer is available, but mostly it plans to open its platform to Saas vendors. These extensions will publish Business ByDesign to extend its functional coverage, meet specific needs, an approach that had been on Business One, its software for SMEs.
A logical extension of business
"There are to date more than 400 applications developed for Business One partners, argues Luis Murguia, vice president of SAP for Europe. Since the management of advanced warehouse management software for up to farm salmon, to the rum distillery, the solutions that have appeared on various Business One. There is on the market today in a war between ecosystems. And this is the one who will have expertise that will win this war. " This ecosystem, SAP will try to recreate it in its cloud offering.
Few details have leaked out so far on this platform Saas and development environment that will provide SAP partners. Asked by 01Informatique, Rainer Zinow says: "We are experimenting C # Ruby but no decision has been taken on the language to be supported. This will be anyway a scripting language. " He adds that the appearance of business data, the object model will be in line with the work of UN / CEFACT in which SAP is involved.
Like Apple's App Store, SAP Will he reign supreme on its marketplace and decide who is the right to commercialize an application and can not do so?
Rainer Zinow denies it: "This is a volume market. All publishers can post their applications on our marketplace. There will be no exclusivity to anyone. The only constraints are the rules of implementation that we will fix. For applications running on our platform, we will know how the software is built and ensure its quality. " Similarly, if an editor extends the data model of the initial ERP, it must develop the game of Web Services that will be needed to access and manipulate this data.
Governance to discover for SAP
SAP will have to address potential conflicts of interest between its partners and its own ambitions. Asked about possible differences between players in the market and SAP, on the occasion of a new version could literally wipe out all the partners that would provide a process covered by the basic package, the head is reassuring: "We think in fact in this case. We could for example offer our partners a new commitment of 12 months forcing us not to launch the process directly competing offers. This is a point still under discussion. "
The next update of SAP ByDesign, version 2.5, is expected in the third quarter of 2009. It will be the first to benefit from a worldwide launch. However, it will wait until 2010 to witness the launch of SAP's cloud offering.
