News that SAP will offer a SaaS product. They’re intending to service around 100 000 punters, while not cannibalising their existing revenue streams.
The unreasonable men pour scorn on the idea over here, saying that “incumbents don’t like disruption because its almost certainly an extraneous force impacting on how they do business” and that it is thus oxymoronic to have incumbents embracing a disruptive technology.
Let’s get one thing straight – I don’t think SAP will succeed with a SaaS strategy long term, however I disagree with the unreasonable men in that I think there are some short/medium term legs on this product. SAP has sufficient momentum that they should be able to achieve a reasonably degree of traction based on a dual platform of a know brand and a desire held by enterprise to move to SOA for that product.
It’s like MYOB coming out with an SME accounting package delivered by SaaS. While it may not be viable long term (and even that I wouldn’t be 100% sure about) they would get immediate traction from substitution transfers between their client/server product and their SaaS offering.
Yet another reason that Xero had to go the IPO route to scale rapidly in order to fight of other challengers.
Ben Kepes is an analyst, an entrepreneur, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergance of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users. 
Hey Ben,
Not sure i agree with this. MYOB have come out with a SaaS version, only not their own (netsuite), because THEY couldn’t make the switch between on premise and SaaS, in otherword manage the disruption.
SAP’s marketing and brand presence might get them some takers but in the end this isn’t in their DNA, which is why their leading SaaS evangalist left about 6 months ago… citing it was just too hard (i’m on holiday so don’t have the link)
[...] posted in the past going out on a limb saying that it’ll be very difficult for traditional software companies to [...]
[...] see a lot of it around, Microsoft embracing SaaS (albeit by a different name), SAP going down the SaaS route etc. I’ve always been pretty sceptical – not being able to imagine how an existing ISV can [...]
[...] posted in the past going out on a limb saying that it’ll be very difficult for traditional software companies to [...]