Arik Hesseldahl reports in allthingsD that SAP appears close to ending active development of the Business ByDesign suite of applications.
On Saturday it reportedly indicated that it will shift its development resources away from the software platform aimed at smaller businesses and instead move the Business ByDesign applications into its mainstream HANA cloud software platform, as part of a larger effort to unify all of its applications on HANA.
Further, SAP further disputed a Saturday report by German magazine WirtschaftsWoche that portrayed the move as essentially sounding a death knell for the product, calling it the “biggest flop” in SAP’s history.
The publication claims that Business ByDesign cost the company 3 billion Euros and required seven years of development work. But after three years on the market it has only managed to attract 785 customers and brings in no more than 23 million euro ($31.5 million) in annual revenue
