July 5, 2005

SAP has announced that MySAP CRM 2005 will be available only in the fourth quarter, and it will tap into the capabilities of the MySAP Analytics product.

MySAP CRM 2005 is actually an upgrade from the 4.0 version and reflects a new naming convention that will feature a year of updates rather than just version number change.

Furthermore, the CRM product will come in vertical flavors (beginning with financial services, telecommunications and the public sector) and incorporates incremental functionality add-ons like e-mail management and mobile capabilities.

Vertical-specific CRM has long been associated with Siebel, and as such SAP's new strategy appears to put even more pressure on the erstwhile sector leader.

The strategy takes advantage of SAP's push to be closer to a flexible platform in nature. Specifically, SAP will rely on partners to build out a lot of the vertical-specific functionality in the upcoming products.

Conceptually, the next step would be to turn customization power over to end users themselves, a step that some hosted CRM providers have already taken. If SAP does decide to accommodate such an approach, it could follow Siebel's lead and acquire a hosted provider in the future; in this regard, it is worth remembering that SAP's portals arm was built atop the acquisition of TopTier.

Source: Line 56