Each major ERP vendor has its own approach for addressing the market demands of 2008. But they all have one thing in common: integration.

SAP

SAP’s challenge for 2008 will be its next generation ERP platform called Business ByDesign, formerly codenamed A1S. The new platform is designed to support hosted and appliance models and was launched in August of 2007. SAP will be pushing ByDesign hard until SAPPHIRE in August 2008 in order to trumpet new successes. Before that time, SAP may partner with established SaaS providers to drive uptake. Business One is SAP's SMB solution. It consists of components acquired from TopManage Financial Systems (2002), iLytix AS for budgeting and reporting (2004), and Praxis for CRM (2006). There are no new imminent releases of Business One but SAP will have to carefully position the product to avoid channel cannibalization from Business ByDesign. All-in-One. Another initiative to access the mid-market is SAP's All-in-One, essentially templatized industry versions of SAP ERP (formerly mySAP). New versions of All-in-One will roll out throughout 2008 as the new functionality from SAP ERP 6.0 trickles down. SAP ERP 6.0 is the most recent release of SAP's flagship product. It marks the full transformation of SAP from client-server (R/3) to a thin-client architecture orchestrated via the NetWeaver middle-ware platform. There will be no new major updates to SAP ERP in 2007. The story for SAP will be its success in converting existing R/3 customers to SAP ERP.