By Business & Finance 
BearingPoint, the management and technology consultancy firm, which employs 200 people in Dublin, has announced a major move into the Irish cloud computing market following the signing of a new agreement with SAP, the German headquartered software company.
The company has also signed its first two contracts for the new cloud service worth in excess of €400,000 over a three year period.
Under the agreement, BearingPoint becomes the first Irish reseller to sell and deploy SAP’s Business ByDesign – a cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) solution.
SaaS offerings enable customers to avoid significant upfront capital outlays such as software, hardware and infrastructure costs. BearingPoint also offers additional support implementation services such as consulting, change management and data migration. BearingPoint Ireland will be the firm’s first office to provide the SAP cloud offering.
BearingPoint and SAP believe this service is ideal for Irish small to medium enterprises and multi-national subsidiaries and that Business ByDesign will be an attractive offering to new and growing companies who want to get established quickly and run their operations with a market-leading business system.
“We have hit the ground running with the signing of our first two contracts with a combined value of over €400,000 over a three year period,” commented Peter Minogue, managing director, BearingPoint Ireland. “Our first two customers are start-up joint venture businesses. Both selected Business ByDesign from BearingPoint to manage their core business processes including finance, supply chain, HR, project management and logistics in an integrated manner. Our implementations will enable both companies to better manage operational costs and support growth.”
He added: “In addition to offering our clients on-premise solutions, now we can provide an integrated and scalable range of cloud-based, leading industry practice processes , allowing companies to concentrate on their core competencies instead of expending time and resources managing complex IT systems. In our 30 years of enabling business change with SAP, this solution offers the most comprehensive and lowest cost of ownership of any ERP solution we have seen.”
“SAP Business ByDesign delivers the best of SAP software. It recognises the growing trend for executives and business owners wanting to run their business in real-time, from whatever location they may be in. It is also aimed at companies that want the benefits of large scale business management applications without the costs of supporting the corresponding IT infrastructure,” added Richard Bennington, head of channel cloud solutions UK&I SAP.
