SAP AG has recently announced a major update to its on-demand solutions suite, the Feature Pack 2.6 for SAP (News - Alert) Business ByDesign Solution. The Business ByDesign solution has been available since February 1, 2011. However, the new update will be providing new capabilities and serve as an open platform on which a broad ecosystem of partners can further customize the software. SAP will be developing new on-demand offerings for various lines of business based on the new open platform.

The feature pack 2.5 was launched in July 2010 and since then SAP Business ByDesign has gained considerable market traction, with nearly 250 customers currently signed up, as well as 50 solution resellers and around 40 solution partners to serve a customer base that is expected to grow by several hundred around the May 2011 timeframe. The latest release has assisted SAP to take another significant step in executing its cloud computing strategy and further deliver on its product strategy to extend the availability of business software across on-premise installations, on-demand offerings and a wide variety of popular mobile devices. Nearly 80 percent of all project-specific adaptations such as adjusting the user interface, creating new reports, building forms and adjusting business processes, can be completed by customer key users without programming. And the remaining 20 percent have been introduced to the first version of the software development kit (SDK) SAP Business ByDesign studio, which will enable partners to create complete add-on solutions.

In a release, Caldwell Velnambi , president of ERP Logic, Inc. said that, "We are extremely excited to be one of the first partners to use the SDK, and we believe it will allow us to add more value to SAP Business ByDesign as well as enable us to meet the specific needs of our customers. We expect our first partner add-on solution to be available in the marketplace very soon."

Peter Lorenz, executive vice president of On Demand and corporate officer of SAP AG added that, "With feature pack 2.6, we are not only delivering additional value to our customers, but are also providing new opportunities for co-innovation to our partners. As we have now moved to a cycle of delivering a new feature pack every six months, the next big step in our SAP Business ByDesign roadmap will be the general availability of feature pack 3.0 in August."