SAP enlists Origin for mySAP.com

SAP has appointed Origin as its first UK hosting partner to push its embryonic apps on tap initiative, mySAP.com.

SAP has appointed Origin as its first UK hosting partner to push its embryonic apps on tap initiative, mySAP.com.

Origin will offer templates based on SAP's cut-down version of its flagship enterprise resource planning (ERP) package R/3, Accelerated SAP (ASAP), to SMEs and subsidiaries of large enterprises from £125 per user per month.

The appointment of Origin, a worldwide IT consultancy owned by Dutch electronics giant Philips, came as SAP formed a subsidiary dedicated to providing hosting services based on mySAP.com.

Mark French, application service provider (ASP) manager at Origin, said the consultancy aimed to have up to 50 customers on board by the end of the year, and was looking for reseller partners to manage implementations and provide support.

"VARs are good at implementation and are very specialist in certain areas, but they don't have the infrastructure to offer hosting. We'll be looking to form partnerships with SAP VARs whose customers are looking to pick up the ASP model," said French.

French said the savings of the ASP model depended on the number of users.

However, he suggested an ASAP rollout for 10 users would cost about £60,000 annually, whereas an ASP implementation would cost from £15,000 per year.

As for rollout times, a big complaint with ERP systems, French said a 50-user company with an internet connection could be running in between one and two months, compared with between six and nine months using ASAP, depending on "breadth of functionality".

But French admitted mass adoption of the ASP model would not happen overnight, citing leased line costs, security concerns and the availability of manpower to provide support as three ongoing constraints.

Origin will host the service from three datacentres in the UK on Compaq Xeon servers running Microsoft NT and SQL Server 7.0.