SAP Business One On Demand

It has been talked about for a few months but on March 6^th 2012 at the SAP CeBIT 2012 event SAP finally announced the launch of the Cloud Hosted version of SAP Business One. The product will be called SAP Business One On Demand and will be supplied by a network of chosen SAP Partners and delivered via a browser. The SAP Business One solution is aimed at the SME market and this On Demand offering will surely prove tempting to businesses looking at reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) or saving on the initial Capital Expenditure of traditional On Premise systems.

Now Hosted SAP Business One has been around for a long time but how is SAP Business One On Demand different? Hosted versions of Business One are available from Partners with a Data Centre, the customer pays for the licenses outright, pays for the implementation and then has the solution delivered via a Remote Desktop like Microsoft Terminal Services. The customer owns the solution but simply have the software / hardware off site. Business One On Demand is a Cloud or Software as a Service (SaaS) offering where the customer leases the software on a per user per month basis delivered via a browser. I have not seen any confirmed prices but it’s rumoured to be around €100 per user per month with an implementation fee on top.

As with any Cloud based solution there are going to be Pros and Cons. The benefits include: speedy implementation, low TCO, no Cap Ex, easy to upgrade, easy to add / remove users, remote working, no on site servers needed, full functionality of SAP Business One, great for multi site organisations.

The main resistance from business owners to a Cloud solution is around security and reliability / “up time”. Read Advice for SME’s Considering a Cloud / Hosted ERP Solution on advice for SME’s considering Cloud based ERP.

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