CeBIT 2011: SAP pins sales hopes on Business By Design developer community

Software giant SAP hopes to almost double its revenue from €12.5bn (£10.7bn) to €20bn by 2015 and expects that most of this growth will be on the back of sales of its Business By Design software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering.

To drive sales of the SaaS platform, the software giant is fostering a "developer ecosystem" devoted to enhancing Business by Design for specific vertical markets.

For example ESS, a German real estate company and SAP customer, has created an add-on specifically for its sector featuring a real estate and facilities management ERP solution and a training infrastruture specific to the industry.

Vice-president of co-innovation for SAP, Sven Denechen, said: "Tinkering with a SaaS platform itself is a no-no, but add-ons will enhance it. They will come from both inside and outside the organisation, from our partners and customers."

So far about 14,000 developers are working with SAP on Business By Design, but Denechen contrasted this with Apple's several million developers: "We have a long way to go," he said.

Executive vice-president OnDemand and SME at SAP, Peter Lorenz, explained that by basing the Business By Design software developer kit on Microsoft Visual Studio there is no need for most developers to get used to a new coding environment.

SAP's add-on strategy should appease many of the platform's critics. One user, Chris Edson from Edison Consulting, which recently installed the solution, said he saw the lack of opportunity to configure the platform as a problem.

"There were a few features we would like to have personalised. For example, it would have been useful to be able to tag specific kinds of sales, or record drivers for signing new clients," he said.

SAP said it is using an agile development strategy to further develop the platform, version 3.0 of which is due to be released in July.

"We are releasing iterations in a six-month cycle. This is fast but not too fast, we want our customers to be able to take advantage of the additional capabilities of each version," said Lorenz.