Business ByDesign - What does the future hold?

The SAP has shifted the initial focus to a complete ERP-Suite in the Cloud enhanced by additional applications for four business areas: People (SuccessFactors), Customer (Cloud for Sales), Money (Cloud for Financials/Travel) and Supplier (Ariba).

In addition, the Group has Hana–Cloudplatform, which is the one-to-one hosting of the Business Suite on the Hana allowed.

Despite everything, Business ByDesign (ByD) remains a part of the Cloud-Strategy. In fact, some companies use SaaS-applications like Cloud for Financials/Travel or Cloud for Marketing and Cloud for Service to varying degrees.

While SAP Cloud for Financials has an overlap with Business ByDesign, other applications adopt the ByDesign Business Objects to extend and provide them with additional functionality in a different user interface (UI).

SAP covers two other market segments in addition to SMEs: large service providers and subsidiaries of international companies.

While the midmarket is primarily covered by service and channel partners, sells SAP in other market segments mostly directly.

Although the midmarket segment has the largest number of customers, it generates SAP the largest ByDesign revenue with large enterprises. ByD customers include Hilti, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants and Lufthansa Revenue Services.

Hilti and Lufthansa use ByD to supply specific subsidiaries, while Roland Berger uses it to cover its entire business, including its core business.

SAP's industry focus for Business ByDesign is primarily on service providers, wholesalers, and manufacturers. Partners and customers, however, sell ByD wherever they see fit.

We are aware of Business-ByDesign implementations in various industries, such as the chemical industry, the public sector, sports or the media.

However, the market needs to prepare for some changes in terms of ByD's future roadmap.

On the one hand SAP due to Microsoft's product, we decided to gradually move some components away from the Silverlight UI. HTML5 and thus implement SAP's global strategy, HTML5 to be used as the standard for future UIs.

In addition, in the future ByD - like all SAP-solutions - Hana use. At the moment, Business ByDesign is running on the Hana-predecessors T-Rex and MaxDB. Through the migration of the ByDesign code to Hana expects SAP an increase in performance.

Despite this activity, observers are questioning the survival of ByDesign, especially if the solution is to be sold by the SAP-management was not mentioned for some time, as happened in May of this year at the Sapphire in Orlando.

Despite the partial reduction in communication on the part of the SAP we at IDC believe in the future of ByD for the following reasons:

On the one hand, the solution is the only SAP-Offer for medium-sized companies looking for a Cloud–ERP-Look for a solution.

On the other hand, many run SaaS-applications on the ByD Process Platform, as well as SAP Cloud for Financials/Travel or SAP Cloud for Sales. Without the ByD Engine, these solutions would no longer work.

In addition, the ByD customer base is steadily increasing and SAP has long since passed the point of no return. Business ByDesign is a viable and growing business that will continue to develop.

The ByD deal with the Australian state of New South Wales alone was worth around $14.5 million, and we expect the ByD business to reach the magic $100 million mark soon.

When Business ByDesign was introduced six years ago, the market was certainly not as far along as the Walldorf suspected at the time.

Today, however SAP at the forefront when customers like Hilti use the ERP–Cloud-solution in local branches.

Also other SaaS–ERP-vendors like Netsuite have had trouble delivering complete ERP–Cloud-solutions to the man, and have instead focused on LOB solutions such as CRM or Professional Services.

Certainly has SAP also some Error which led to the rewriting of the architecture in 2008/2009 and the move away from Microsoft Silverlight as the UI base.

From our point of view it is clear that SAP needs to communicate this solution more consistently, including revenue performance, customer count, and roadmap.

It is well known that the former goals were not achieved. SAP should not be put off by this, however, and be more open with information about Business ByDesign and the business behind it.

SAP was the first provider in the SaaS-based ERP-market and sometimes got a bloody nose in the process.

Nevertheless, we are convinced that SAP also has many advantages, as the solution offers greater maturity and better market coverage with localized solutions.

Being the first company to enter this market was risky and expensive. However, can SAPThe company has been celebrated as an innovator in this area, as well as in the in-memory market.