SAP's Plan: Overtake salesforce.com by 2012

As per the analyst report published by Santander, the key takeaways from  an SAP roadshow in Iberia was that Cloud computing was the "next big thing" for SAP. Finally we have someone other than salesforce.com in the legacy enterprise apps space who is a convert to cloud computing. SAP, better late than never.

Key takeaways reported from the roadshow include:-

• SAP considers ‘cloud computing’ as a very important change in the software business. 
• Business ByDesign will be its main bet in 2010 and would be widely available in 2H10 
• SAP expects it could add US$1bn in revenues, more than 10,000 customers per year 
• Though SAP’s main bet in 2010, it is not likely to contribute significant revenues until 2011.
  

After a wide release in 2H10, SAP believes that with 10,000 customers it would add  US$ 1 billion in 2011 and with a 10% growth in 2012 take on salesforce.com who with 67,000+ customers has a revenue of close to $1.3 billion. SAP attempting a billion with only 10,000 customers would be interesting to see.

salesforce.com  who has observed that SAP is missing from the market in the last few quarters, would be looking forward to the challenge but then 2011 is still some time and way and a lot can change.

SAP's strategy seems to be unfolding with news coming out that its readying a rival to the Google Wave. While the hype is pointing towards some kind of competition to the Google Wave, its hard to believe it. The cometition is not the Google Wave. Is it Salesforce Chatter?