The Global SME unit will launch in January with Hans-Peter Klaey at the helm. Klaey, had previously helped establish SAP's EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) operations and, since 2002, and has served as president and chief executive officer of SAP's Asia-Pacific activities.He will report to Léo Apotheker, SAP board member and president of customer solutions and operations."The creation of a dedicated line of business to focus our worldwide activities and align our multiple go-to-market channels is a pivotal next step in realizing our SME growth ambitions," said Leo Apotheker, president of customer solutions and operations and a member of the SAP Executive Board, in a statement.Klaey,has his work cut out for him. As enterprise software sales slow-there's only so many Fortune 1,000 companies-SAP's biggest competitor, Oracle, is also looking to tap the SME market to boost sales.

SAP plans to grow its current 30,000-plus customer roster to 100,000, by 2010. SME's are a key aspect to this goal, also in this process building out a partner channel to reach more such customers.Currently, 31 percent of SAP's order entries come from the SME market, according to Klaey. His goal is to increase that to 40 to 45 percent to reach SAP's 100,000 mark.

So what are the Small & Medium Markets:

Medium Market - companies with employees between 100 and 1,000 or thereabouts

Product Defined - All in One - It's preconfigured and allows partners to add more preconfigured micro-vertical solutions on top.

Small Market - 10 and 100 employees

Product Defined - Business One

SAP has added close to 500 new channel partners in the last 12 months to bring the total to around 2,200. Also during this period, SAP added over 5,000 new customers in the indirect channel area alone, or 22 new customers per working day. "SME is a space that is under served, yet it has a ton of local and global competitors," said Klaey. "What is missing is global best practices."

Infoworld has a brief interview with Klaey.

Source: 1, 2

Prashanth Rai