Information Engineer

SAP announced that its on demand enterprise suite Business ByDesign roll out is moving slower than previously expected. The company said that it would take 12 to 18 months longer than the original target of 2010 to reach $1 billion in revenue and touch 10,000 customers in the mid-market. For 2008, SAP expects to have less than 1,000 customers across six countries.

SAP wants to make sure it doesn’t flub Business ByDesign, which represents the future of the company. SAP pioneered client/server ERP software, but has been slow to enter the rapidly growing on demand arena. The company has deployed 2,500 engineers over the last four or five years to create Business ByDesign, which the company touts as the most complete on-demand suite across applications and industries.

SAP’s plan is to provide 2,100 service interfaces in Business ByDesign, which will mesh with each other but will not be customizable, according SAP founder Hasso Plattner.

NetSuite has been working on its on-demand suite for ten years, coming out with new versions yearly. And, salesforce.com is expanding its platform to include ERP capabilities, such as CODA’s financial applications built on the Force.com platform.

Plattner differentiates Business ByDesign from Salesforce.com by virtue of the completeness of the SAP suite.For SAP, software is about serving larger businesses with a complete, integrated suite of applications with “wall-to-wall functionality,” Plattner said.

At a recent debate, salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff challenged SAP founder Hasso Plattner

See also Larry Dignan’s coverage of SAP’s quarterly results.

SAP’s Peter Zencke: Inside Business ByDesign

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