John Wookey, SAP's new head of on-demand software applications
for large companies, provided the first details of SAP's strategy
for that market in a recent InformationWeek interview.
Here's what SAP customers can expect in the coming months:
function-specific software applications, available by subscription,
that plug into customers' on-site SAP Business Suite systems, and
that SAP will host for customers using a multitenant
architecture.
Wookey said he'll have groups of developers creating these
software services using the agile development method, resulting in
rapid feedback from early users.
That will increase both the speed and number of on-demand apps
SAP can bring to the market compared with what it could do if it
were using more traditional development methods, he said.
SAP likely will introduce these products in groupings—or
"waves," as Wookey called them—with the first group partly in
the marketplace today.
Acquisitions also play heavily in SAP's software-as-a-service
strategy, including its purchases of Frictionless Commerce, Clear
Standards last month, and just last week SkyData Systems, a
developer of CRM applications for mobile phones. All of these
companies are involved in on-demand software services, or are run
by executives with that experience.
However, SAP won't develop software services that compete
directly, as independent SaaS applications, with companies such as
Salesforce.com, Concur, and Ariba, Wookey said. Rather, all of
SAP's on-demand apps will be designed as extensions of Business
Suite.
They'll be built on a multitenant architecture that was
developed by Frictionless, a provider of supplier relationship
management software services that SAP acquired in 2006.
"We do understand the on-demand marketplace, we're very committed
to it, and we have a pretty unique strategy to how we're attacking
it," Wookey said.
Last November, SAP hired Wookey to head up a new initiative to
develop SaaS for large companies. It was an intriguing development,
since Wookey formerly headed up application development at
archrival Oracle and was a longtime member of Larry Ellison's inner
circle, before leaving Oracle for undisclosed reasons in late
2007.
The hire also indicated that SAP was getting serious about
developing a strategy for software-as-a-service for large
companies, which former CEO Henning Kagermann first discussed in an
interview with InformationWeek one year ago. Until recently, Wookey
had not been available for media interviews.
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