SAP: Free analytics and ByDesign in 2010

[Doug Heywood]

ITWire, by Angus Kidman
Tuesday, 03 November 2009

Amidst growing enterprise unrest over maintenance fees, SAP has pledged to bundle free analytics with its ERP systems and hopes for a general release of its on-demand Business ByDesign software early next year.

In an appearance at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Cannes, CEO Léo Apotheker said that many of the analytics technologies SAP had acquired when it purchased Business Objects in 2007 would be made available as part of general updates for its Business Suite customers.

"The suite will continue to evolve and add functionality," he said, confirming that "free embedded analytics" were on the agenda.

Apotheker, who took the helm as co-CEO at SAP in 2008 and become sole CEO in May 2009, is pushing the notion of in-memory databases to allow real-time analytics, rather than requiring separate data warehouses for detailed analytics.

"With new technologies, we can revolutionise the way enterprise computing can happen in the future and make it truly real-time."

"It simplifies your stack tremendously. If I can take out a whole layer, namely the relational database, that is good news for you."

One element of that plan for SAP is its ByDesign on-demand suite, which is currently being tested by 100 customers in six countries and recently went into its second release.

"We spent quite some time making sure that the technology actually scales in a dynamic fashion," Apotheker said. "We have one more upgrade to do by the end of this year. If that goes well, I am confident we can talk about a major announcement about ByDesign early next year."

Despite that, Apotheker doesn't anticipate a totally on-demand future. "The world out there is large enough for all of these applications to coexist. I don't believe anyone should have a monolithical strategy. It shouldn't be the vendor who decides what to run in the cloud; you should make that decision. Our strategy is to give 100% choice in what you want to run where."

While extra analytic features and a broader range of licensing options will be welcome, SAP is still facing pressure over licensing and maintenance fees.

The company is pursuing a controversial plan to push up its annual maintenance fees if it meets key performance indicators (KPIs) which have been defined by the company and its user groups. That plan is being tested by a core group of SAP's largest users but will eventually be pushed out to all customers.

As Gartner analyst Yvonne Genovese noted in an earlier session: "The ability to change things like business applications has literally gone away. Maintenance is a huge issue in the market now, because there's lock-in. Most of you are paying for the software you own every five years."

Gartner Dataquest estimates that SAP has 27% of the global ERP market, more than twice the share of nearest competitor Oracle.