Thursday, February 01, 2007
The Four Hundred--SAP to Chase the SMB Market--Again
The Four Hundred--SAP to Chase the SMB Market--Again: "SAP currently has 38,000 customers and has a goal of reaching 100,000 customers by the end of 2010. The A1S product is the lynchpin of that strategy. If IBM doesn't have the A1S product in development on the System i5 platform--well, I don't know what I will do. But I know what Big Blue will do: miss out on a huge opportunity.
Not everyone is welcoming SAP to a renewed effort in the midrange. 'One has to wonder if SAP truly understands the mid-market or whether this strategy is solely an effort to detract attention from the slowing growth of their Fortune 500 base,' said Jim Schaper, chief executive officer at Infor. 'Medium-sized customers do not want all-in-one products that need massive customization efforts to address their line of business. That approach is a relic of the past, when ERP implementations were akin to corporate open heart surgery. Infor has built a strong growing company on delivering solutions with industry experience already built in. The bottom line is that customers want more functionality, less complexity, and the lowest total cost of ownership. That is not the plan we see from SAP.'
Infor, which is a privately held company that includes the former MAPICS, SSA, Baan, Geac, and myriad other software firms, has over 70,000 customers and $2.1 billion in sales. Infor is the largest application software company in the IBM midrange, ahead of Oracle's JD Edwards unit. "
Not everyone is welcoming SAP to a renewed effort in the midrange. 'One has to wonder if SAP truly understands the mid-market or whether this strategy is solely an effort to detract attention from the slowing growth of their Fortune 500 base,' said Jim Schaper, chief executive officer at Infor. 'Medium-sized customers do not want all-in-one products that need massive customization efforts to address their line of business. That approach is a relic of the past, when ERP implementations were akin to corporate open heart surgery. Infor has built a strong growing company on delivering solutions with industry experience already built in. The bottom line is that customers want more functionality, less complexity, and the lowest total cost of ownership. That is not the plan we see from SAP.'
Infor, which is a privately held company that includes the former MAPICS, SSA, Baan, Geac, and myriad other software firms, has over 70,000 customers and $2.1 billion in sales. Infor is the largest application software company in the IBM midrange, ahead of Oracle's JD Edwards unit. "
