SAP is looking to an aggressive midmarket push to help triple its customer base over the next four years and stave off competition from the likes of Oracle and Microsoft.
In his keynote speech Dec. 4 at the company’s annual analyst conference here, Shai Agassi, president of SAP’s Product and Technology Group and a member of its executive board, said he asked his team to “shoot for the moon” when describing his vision for a transformational midmarket suite.
“What’s the moon? Take a company doing $100 [million] to $200 million in business, and be able to set them up in a week or two, on a system they love,” Agassi said. “The cost of operation would be half that of what it costs today. That’s the moon. [The reality is,] take something that’s on the market today and make it work. We started from this foundation—MySAP ERP and CRM on demand on NetWeaver.”
SAP officials announced earlier this year plans to expand the company’s customer base of about 35,000 users to 100,000 by 2010. They want to maintain a leading edge in the business applications market as Oracle closes the gap through acquisitions (it has bought 24 companies in as many months), Microsoft builds its Dynamics suite of applications for the midmarket and Infor Global Solutions tries to gain momentum with its own spate of purchases. Infor’s SSA Global buy in September made it the third-largest ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendor behind SAP and Oracle.
SAP has a two-pronged midmarket plan: the development of two new application suites and a hard push to build a bigger channel to sell more products into the midmarket.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: SAP Looks to the Midmarket
