SAP Dives Into SMB Market

The company said Wednesday at SAPPHIRE 02, the company's annual user conference here, that SAP Business One, based on technology the company bought from TopManage, will be phased in across the world.

The focus is on ease of use and fast rollouts, said Leo Apotheker, who last month was named interim CEO of SAP Americas. "This product is extremely simple to use, but has all the functionality required for [SMB companies," he said.

The product will be available domestically in the next 90 days and will be shipped through partners, Apotheker said.

For the most "sophisticated" SMBs, SAP will also field mySAP All-in-One, which will be available for 11 vertical industries in the United States, he said.

The channel focus of these products represents a new frontier for SAP, which will see increasing competition in this space, and perhaps beyond, from its partner Microsoft.

With its acquisition of Navision, Microsoft will enter many European SMB markets against SAP, observers said. Microsoft also plans its own CRM play due by year's end.

"Sales will probably be through the indirect channel; however, for multinational customers we will probably also use our direct channel. They will work together. Local solutions will be delivered by local partners," Apotheker said.

Pricing was nebulous, though Apotheker promised the offering will be very competitively priced. "Pricing will not be an issue," he said.

SAP Inc. CEO Hasso Plattner downplayed the existence of any rift with Microsoft over that company's proposed entrance into ERP applications. Microsoft's acquisition last year of Great Plains "didn't bother us," he said. Plattner acknowledged that the Navision deal puts more of a competitive edge on the situation "because in Europe we go pretty far down" into SMB, serving small entities. But Great Plains came into Europe and obviously went nowhere. Why buy Great Plains and a year later buy Navision in the same space?"

Plattner also reiterated the company's enterprise stake with mySAP. "We can have linear scaling, and 100,000 users for a portal implementation is not putting any fear in our eyes. A million hits a day is no problem, and we can scale beyond that."

The company also unveiled enhancements to mySAP CRM, which provides easier access to multiple data sources and business processes across applications and personalized views based on the user's role. MySAP Supply Chain Management functions were also expanded to offer a better view across the entire supply chain network and a consolidated view of inventory, events and schedules, the company said.

In addition, SAP introduced Collaboration Projects for mySAP Product Lifecycle Management. The new functions support methodologies such as Advanced Product Quality Planning.