The Schwartz Reportby Jeffrey Schwartz, Executive Editor
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Who Will Gain from SAP's Pain?
SAP has fallen way short of its goal to get 10,000 customers onto its Business By Design Web-based business software after three years. According to The Wall Street Journal, only about 100 customers have signed on for the product.
"It was not as successful as expected," Rainer Zinow, SAP's senior vice president for Business By Design tells the Journal (see report). "You can do everything you want under lab conditions, but when you are in the real world, sometimes things look a bit different."
Certainly the success of Salesforce.com has not helped SAP, which recently launched an updated version, which for $179 per user per month runs the gamut of HR, financial and project management apps. Nor has the economy. Just as the SAP software-as-a-service offering was released, IT spending followed the economy into a free fall.
But Salesforce.com is still the company to beat. And now Microsoft is wading deeper into the game. As reported in the current issue of Redmond Channel Partner, Microsoft is readying a new version of Dynamics CRM Online for shipment in the coming quarter. Look for Microsoft to bring more of its Dynamics product suite online as well.
Indeed there are many players that will be fighting this battle including Oracle, NetSuite, Intuit and a host of others. And SAP has some pretty big customers, including Microsoft.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on September 29, 2010