On SAP And Its On-Again, Off-Again Mid Market Focus

There has been an ongoing saga over the past several years with regards SAP and its focus on the mid market. When SAP’s SMB focussed (although, let’s be honest here, any SAP product is likely to be more mid than small) ByDesign product was announced close to a decade ago, its promise was that it would deliver SAP-level functionality for an entirely new class of business. In part because of an organizational arrogance and in part because of technical limitations of the time, the strategy of taking parts of the core SAP offering and wrapping them with a web services layer really didn’t deliver what we now expect from a cloud solution. Not surprisingly the reception at launch was muted. Too little, too late and a product offering that SAP’s client base wasn’t asking for.