SAP Bets the Future on Business By Design

On September 19, 2007, SAP AG (SAP) unveiled Business ByDesign ("BBD"), its long-awaited "on-demand", software-as-a-service ("SaaS"), entry in the enterprise application market. The initial description of BBD sets it apart from most other competing offerings - both proprietary and open-source, and our initial reference checks confirm this (See "SAP's BBD Beta Customers Speak Out"). When completed and delivered, BBD aims to dominate the applications software market for small and medium sized enterprises and lets business people operate and manage the product rather than rely on IT organizations.

Positioned as a product for midsize companies with 100-500 employees, Business ByDesign (formerly referred to as A1S) is much more than that. It is clearly the next-generation, "bet-the-company" product for SAP. SAP stated ambitious goals for BBD: $1 billion+ in revenues and 10,000 new users by 2010. In our view, SAP will likely fall short of its aggressive targets. The company does not yet have a dedicated re-seller channel for BBD and building up a network of re-sellers, data centers and services specialists will take at least 24-36 months. BBD is also a highly proprietary product that is in Beta test and pays limited lip service to the "open source" hot button of many IT users.

However, BBD is arguably the biggest announcement in enterprise applications of this decade. It has major implications for the entire industry and for SAP customers and investors. BBD represents a polar philosophical opposite to SAP's key competitor -Oracle (ORCL), world view of business applications, - a view centered on economic consolidation rather than SAP's drive for technological breakthrough. The BBD announcement signals a new playing field for large application software providers - an environment that is akin to car and computer hardware companies that can be defined by the technological race for engineering superiority. The new BBD product has both a new framework and a new and complete set of enterprise applications that are scalable, connectable and in fact in a page taken from Microsoft (MSFT) strategy, subsumes many of the functions previously provided by separately sold third-party products. It remains to be seen if the mid-market and small business customers will see the SAP's value proposition in the same positive light. SAP is betting the company future on BBD and moves the minimum standards and goal posts of business software applications to a new level for the entire software industry.

SAP is the first large incumbent software vendor to announce such a broad set of business application functionality available on-demand. BBD aims to give business users actionable information, rather than a transaction processing system. The last time SAP announced such a transformative product was the launch of R/3 – which is by far the most successful ERP product in history. SAP's intent with BBD is to deliver a broad array of enterprise-wide functionality (financials, manufacturing, supplier relationship management, CRM, BI, project management, etc.), at a price that compels the users to change the status quo.

In another analogy to Microsoft, this is what Microsoft Office did to the stand-alone desktop productivity applications – over time customers will question the need to spend incremental dollars with a wide-array of software providers (BI tools, report writers, process modeling tools, et al) when they can get it all from SAP. Market Impact While BBD will generate lots of industry buzz, it is unlikely to freeze the market in 2007, and even into the first half of 2008.

• Users looking to implement an enterprise wide solution in the next twelve months should carry on with their plans, as we do not expect BBD to become operationally stable for another 12-18 months.

• Only the most hardcore leading edge companies with generic business processes should consider BBD through 1H08.

• We see little to no impact on Oracle through its 2008 fiscal year.

• Looking out 12-24 months, BBD has the potential to be a major force in the market.

Infor, Microsoft, Netsuite, Epicor, IFS, and QAD, among others will be impacted by SAP's BBD. Upstart open source ERP and CRM solutions like Compiere and SugarCRM will be forced to compete on more than "low TCO enabled by open source". The competition is now on notice, and will have to respond by the first half of 2008 or risk being left in the dust. Application software vendors lacking stand-out vertical industry capability (e.g., QAD in Tier 2/3 automotive) or departmental/business process expertise (e.g., Salesforce in sales automation) will be gasping for air as SAP sucks the oxygen (and money) out of their markets. SAP's potential to succeed is undeniable.

1) SAP is one of the few software companies to be successful in more than one era of computing. There are few, if any, technology companies who have successfully transitioned from one era to the next. SAP was strong in mainframe business applications (R/2), and globally dominant in client/server business applications (R/3). The same team that made R/2 and R/3 a global success (notably Peter Zencke and Gerhard Oswald) led the BBD team. Combined with SAP's already considerable investment and the fact that this is the first time the company has made such a singularly bold announcement since R/3, it is clear that project Business ByDesign ("BBD") is the true progeny of R/2 and R/3.

2) SAP has the patience and resources to invest for the long-haul. 200-400 million euros is a substantial commitment, and SAP has proven to be much more patient than its competition. Only Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM (IBM) could match the financial commitment of SAP – and none has shown the intent to take such an approach.

3) SAP is making a very deliberate strategic choice. They have decided not to go the M&A consolidation route, have not pursued growth in services (although it would be a path of least resistance), and they are not going into horizontal technology (and have historically stayed away from it).

4) SAP brand equity is strong, it has global reach, and deep expertise in business processes. SAP knows business processes better than any other major software company (although Oracle is closing that gap). SAP is leveraging its strong reputation to enter a market that historically has been filled with opportunistic, unsophisticated software vendors. The company has spent millions on an ad campaign during the past ten months, raising awareness for its SMB efforts.

5) SAP's competition can be divided into two segments – the SMB incumbents, and the traditional applications software market opponents led by Oracle. The incumbents with on-demand solutions are an easy target for SAP. It is full of under-capitalized, software companies that struggle to articulate their ROI proposition. A number of the mid to large size players in the SMB apps market, e.g., Infor and Sage Group, are an amalgamation of un-connectable legacy products more focused on maintaining a reliable stream of maintenance revenues than delivering break-through innovation.

On the other hand, SAP's success is not guaranteed.

1) The SMB market is fundamentally different than SAP's core business. SMB customers are a) very price sensitive; b) have few, if any, tech resources; c) are not tech savvy. This is the exact opposite of SAP's traditional sweetspot – large sophisticated enterprise customers with competent, well-staffed IT organizations. The corporate genetics of SAP are counter to what makes a successful SMB software vendor.

2) Business ByDesign is just the latest in a long string of mostly unmemorable SMB initiatives by SAP, further convoluting SAP's already complex product line up. SAP has done a decent job positioning its offerings in an attempt to avoid overlap and cannibalization. However, the current SAP product line-up will need to be rationalized -- e.g., should a midsize customer buy SAP Business One, SAP Business All-in-One, or Business ByDesign? BBD is receiving the lion share of investment funds and resources – Business One and All-in-One customers will need to take that into consideration before making additional commitments to those products.
Furthermore, many large SAP customers also have small and midsize operations not currently using SAP products. If they chose to adopt Business ByDesign, how will those implementations integrate into their large, complex, global SAP system?

3) BBD is neither cheap nor easy. At $125/user for a minimum of 25 users, that works out to $135,000 for three years. Most organizations will need to license 50+ users. Even at $135,000 many SMB's will find they can purchase applications that are "good enough" at the same or lower cost (even when you include hardware, implementation, etc. With impressively complex plumbing lurking just below the surface of BBD, it's reminiscent of early R/3 days when a German dictionary and ABAP programming skills were highly recommended for the early adopters installing the product.

4) Enterprise applications are not trivial (as SAP well knows), and the launch event was short on pragmatic details. For example, how will customers migrate their data? Who will do the business process consulting? Are customers forced into the SAP reference models for industries and business functions? It's relatively easy to offer a single business capability/process on-demand (e.g., sales lead management/customer tracking, HR application management, web conferencing). Configuring an enterprise-wide system, loaded with clean data is a much bigger challenge – even for a relatively small company.

5) To quell the doubters, SAP will undoubtedly refer to its history and its engineering prowess. Its current market-dominating product, ERP 6.0 (nee R/3), they will insist, was originally intended to be the "little brother" to R/2. It has matured into the most scalable packaged application in the market. SAP has thousands of Mittelstand (German mid-market) customers today, further proof that the company understands the SMB market. And SAP will quietly remind its critics that there was no migration path from R/2 to R/3. R/2 customers had to purchase the system anew and undergo an often lengthy and complex implementation of R/3.

In spite of these drawbacks, SAP rocketed to the top of one of the largest, fastest-growing segments of the IT industry during the 1990s. Yet, these are different times today and there ar