Earlier this week SAP announced the availability of the feature pack 2.5 for its Business ByDesign solution for China, France, Germany, India, the United Kingdom and the United States.

When contacted regarding a New Zealand release, SAP Australia and New Zealand spokesman, Peter Sertori, said that the suite won’t be available here until late next year at the earliest. 

“The key reason is that being a full ERP on demand product, localisation is required for the legislative nuances of each country. This applies particularly to HR payroll systems, as well as Finance modules.”

ByDesign is a volume product and SAP decided to launch it in countries that have the capacity to generate volume quickly.

SAP’s current on-premise customers won’t see ByDesign as the next iteration of their current software offering.

“If you’ve already got on-premise, that’s more than likely the model you’d stick with for the core and use on-demand extensions such as BI, CRM and so on,” he said.

So when can we expect a release? “In terms of ByDesign release date in ANZ, it’s only going to volume now in the phase one countries, so that’s the focus, there’s no real timeframe committed to yet. It will more likely be separate launches in ANZ given we have different legislative requirements.”

Sertori said that the earliest at this stage would be late 2011, though that is yet to be officially confirmed.