SAP’s “Business ByDesign” product was to be a major new SaaS release for this year, but the company announced last week that Business by Design would be delayed by over a year, with a new release date expected in 2010.

As Phil Wainewright notes at ZDnet this is very bad news for SAP and very good news for their key competitors who have similar offerings ready to roll, especially US market leader Netsuite along with European companies including UK’s CODA which is a Salesforce platform and
Twinfield, an on-demand financial application from the Netherlands.

SAP’s endorsement and promotion of the concept of this type of SaaS suite combined with an offering delayed far into the future may even help Netsuite’s sagging stock which was off after reported earnings that were under investor expectations.