SAP Acquires Praxis To Bolster Business One

SAP has acquired Praxis Software Solutions and is integrating its Web-based CRM and e-commerce capabilities into SAP Business One.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. SAP said Minneapolis-based Praxis, a privately held software company, was a long-term Business One partner.

Business One is SAP's ERP solution for small and midsize companies. The product competes with offerings from Microsoft Business Solutions and Sage Software.

Integration between the Praxis and SAP code won't be an issue, since Praxis already was an SAP partner and its wares were developed for Business One, said Gadi Shamia, senior vice president for solution management and small-business solutions at SAP, Walldorf, Germany.

SAP has communicated its intentions about what it will build into its core product and which areas ISV partners should concentrate on, Shamia said. Last year, the Walldorf, Germany-based software giant acquired iLytix Systems, a Norwegian startup specializing in reporting and budgeting tools, and incorporated that technology into Business One.

"We are not going up into the verticals, but we let partners know what we're doing," Shamia told CRN.

Business One, itself the result of an SAP acquisition of TopManage four years ago, is making headway in smaller companies, according to some solution providers. The product also is seeing good traction in divisions and subsidiaries of large companies that run MySAP ERP, they said.

Still, SAP faces heated competition from Sage, which built its business in the midmarket, and Microsoft, which bought Great Plains Software and Navision several years ago specifically to attack the midmarket. And Oracle, like SAP, is pushing down to the midmarket from its enterprise roots.

Business One offers companies a set $3,750 per-named user fee for ERP and accounting. Microsoft this week followed suit by announcing plans to sell its ERP lines on a per-user cost basis, although Microsoft counts concurrent users, rather than named users.