During Thursday's SAP channel partner summit held at the Hilton Hotel in this city, executives described AP as a "great potential" for the subscription-based hosted delivery model for customers.

Robert Vetter, senior vice president of SAP's business development SME and business all-in-one go-to-market strategy, said subscription-based hosting is a new consumption model, with only about eight to 12 weeks implementation time. It involves SAP certified partners and is offered at a subscription-based pricing or pay-per-user per month.

"Customers now expect a package and not just a solution with no pre-define scope but quick implementation, training, services, maintenance and is offered at a fixed price point," said Christopher Knoerr, vice president, indirect channels SME, SAP AP and Japan.

According to Tom Kindermans, senior vice president for SME, SAP Asia-Pacific, the company's strategy since the past years is consistent -- zooming in on SMEs. "It's about the instant value of implementation and speed is a valuable proposition," he said, describing subscription-based hosting as "sales-on-demand" which has transparency, continuity and is not disruptive to the business.

Kindermans said SAP is looking forward for its portfolio expansion which he termed as "best fit solution portfolio" -- and they are SAP All-in-One, SAP Business Objects, SAP Business ByDesign, and SAP BusinessOne.