SAP's Hosted CRM: Ten Things You Need To Know
Sizing up SAP's plunge into the hosted CRM market.
By DAVID SIMS
TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist
- Henning Kagermann, CEO of German enterprise-software powerhouse SAP, says SAP will launch a web-hosted version of its customer relationship management suite.
- Earlier they'd said they had no plans to do this, according to Infoconomy's Pete Swabey.
- At the US Sapphire user conference in Boston a couple months ago SAP talked a lot about its CRM version 5.0, which you'll see in the third quarter of this year, but didn't say anything about a hosted product offering.
- There were some rumors.
- Lots of companies have succeeded with hosted CRM.
- Think it's a coincidence that the announcement came after SAP announced their second quarter results, which showed that the CRM division was the only one where revenues stayed flat?
- This reporter doesn't either.
- Kagermann said there wasn't any link.
- This reporter has no reason to doubt his word, either.
- Guess we just don't know, really.
- It took Siebel longer than most companies to catch on to hosted CRM.
- It took SAP a little longer than Siebel.
- Think seeing the likes of RightNow, salesforce.com and others, including Ellison baby NetSuite succeeding, made an impression on SAP?
- In October 2004, according to ComputerWire, SAP America and HP offered a managed CRM product aimed at the mid-market.
- Some people think the reason SAP's CRM numbers were low this quarter is because everyone was waiting for the heavily-rumored hosted product.
- Which makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you accept the not-a-coincidence announcement timing.
- ComputerWire thinks the move is a "complete change of strategy."
- Evidently back in May at the European Sapphire conference Peter Kirschbauer, head of business solutions told ComputerWire the company had no plans to release a hosted version of its CRM product.
- Other hosted CRM vendors are beings sporting about it.
- Salesforce.com said the move was "fantastic" because it "endorses on-demand as what customers want." And hey, it might take business from Siebel.
- Siebel's hoping it'll take business from salesforce.com
- Things are going to get a lot more competitive in the hosted CRM space now.
Sources cited in article:
-----
David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles by David Sims, please visit:
[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
|