SAP aims for a billion users

Software heavyweight SAP aims to have a billion consumers by 2015, despite highlighting low adoption growth in SA.

Alvin Paules, chief technology architect, says SAP has 35 million application users globally that were built up over the company's 37-year history.

Despite analysts' doubts and the number of years it took to reach 35 million application users, Paules is still optimistic about reaching the 2015 goal. “We believe that it is achievable. One just needs to look at the rate of technology adoption by the new generation.”

He looks at the period of time it took past technology solutions to acquire 50 million users as a reference point. “Radio took 38 years, TV took 13 years, Internet took four years, iPod took three years and Facebook took two years. So the key is to find the innovative applications that have a unique value proposition and are viral. SAP will provide a platform that will enable our ecosystem to co-innovate, to create the applications that will touch these consumers.”

He adds that these new innovative applications will not be related to enterprise resource planning (ERP). “These are new applications and new opportunities coming to the market.”

Paules says standard software sales revenue is not going to drop, but instead growth is going to come to the market with these new applications.

As an example, he adds that SAP is doing some work on an application that will help consumers to determine if the products they are purchasing are fake or genuine. He gives the example of consumers that had purchased “grey” Nokia batteries without realising they were grey imports.

“If consumer devices are able to read some kind of RFID tag or code, then one should be able to scan it at the time of purchase and determine if it is fake or real. It's a brand new application.”

He explains that this application could be hosted on the cloud for external sales.

Another innovation Paules mentions, is a sustainability programme code-named “River”. He adds that this deals with on-demand solutions like the Carbon Impact solution that SAP has already launched.

Paules says adoption growth in SA seems to be very low when compared globally.

He adds that this is because the local economy may still be too centralised. This means there isn't as much competition as can be found in the US or Europe, so market leaders become very comfortable with the products or services they already offer, according to Paules. They remain in this comfort zone until they feel threatened into stepping up.

“Because the economy is fairly centralised, the adoption rate of own processes is much slower.” Paules explains that own processes encompass flexibility and agility.

“The new architecture and associated product set enables new 'agile' ways of doing business. The tools and capability are there.”

COO of SAP Africa Ashley Boag adds that agility or innovation is what enables companies to change business models faster.

Solutions business development leader Darren Crowder says SAP needs to extend its reach outside its core landscape. Business development manager Lazaros Lazaridis believes there is a lot of opportunity for innovation outside ERP.

“We have a strategy to ensure our architecture is able to exploit new innovative devices; for example, our applications were available on the iPad at the time that the iPad was released. The same applies to our BPM [business process management] tool being available in Google Wave at the time of the release by Google,” adds Paules.

He says SAP will innovate in four distinct areas: on-premise, on-demand, on-device and orchestration. “In this new world, it is important to be able to innovate at the appropriate speed across all of the four areas concurrently. That is what our customers require and that is what our architecture enables.”

“Unless they find a way to tap into the mobile and mass market, it's highly unlikely this can be achieved,” says World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck of SAP's 2015 goal.

He says that, as a business-oriented systems developer, SAP would have to change its core business to reach the mass market.

“It's always been very difficult for enterprise-related companies to gain a foothold in the consumer market.” Goldtsuck adds that such an achievement is not unknown but it is rare and it will pose problems for SAP strategically.

WWW Strategy MD Steven Ambrose says one billion users would be about 30% of all the Internet users globally. “It may well be achievable if these are people who interact with business and or governments or other organisations via a SAP Internet-enabled system.”

He adds this would mean SAP aggressively growing its presence as a systems supplier of major companies, governments and other organisations that deal with the general Internet-using public.

“The Internet is becoming the preferred way to communicate with customers and stakeholders, and all interaction with banks, governments, utilities and increasingly commerce, is being focused on the Internet via fixed and mobile platforms. If this is the context then they may meet this goal; it does sound very ambitious, however.”