Sapphire Now: SAP admits legal issues are holding back Business ByDesign success

MADRID: SAP now has 700 customers running its on-demand Business ByDesign products, but said that legal problems are hindering its expansion into further markets.

The number of Business ByDesign customers is significant given that SAP was relatively slow to take to the cloud, and had only 40 customers running on the platform in July 2009.

The company was forced at the time to acknowledge problems with the architecture of Business ByDesign, and has remained cautious when referring to the number of customers using the product.

The architectural problems were fixed last year, but Business ByDesign is still limited to a number of geographical markets.

However, SAP co-chief executive Jim Hagemann Snabe said at the Sapphire Now event that this will change in the near future.

"We know that limiting Business ByDesign to eight or 10 countries is reducing its market opportunities," he said during a press conference.

"We need to push it into the bigger market, and will come up with an accelerated programme of localisation."

Snabe explained that making Business ByDesign available globally is taking time because of different legal frameworks in each country.

A recent SAP User Group survey of 100 customers found that 58 per cent believe that SAP's cloud roadmap lacks clarity, while 27 per cent could not even identify SAP's cloud computing offerings.

However, Snabe aimed to set the record straight during his keynote. Customers will be offered Business ByDesign if they want a cloud solution for all their business needs, while the more specific SAP On-Demand will be aimed at customers wanting to run a mix of cloud and on-premise 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 and expenses," said Snabe.

SAP launched three specific on-demand applications this year, which can be used to deploy one ERP cloud application at a time.

Business ByDesign is SAP's complete on-demand ERP suite that was once aimed at the mid-market but is now also marketed to large companies that want to quickly deploy an ERP solution to subsidiaries.

Snabe encouraged customers attending Sapphire Now to "innovate on top of Business ByDesign" using the SAP SDK. Customers can also buy additional applications for Business ByDesign from the SAP store.