SAP News

» Oracle Unlimited and Fusion Futures Enterprise Anti-matter ZDNet.com: "Nevertheless, Oracle is doing a lot better as the custodian of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel than many, myself included, thought they could. So much so that I personally think they could run the whole event without mentioning Fusion and no one would really care. Of course that would make it just a little less than boring. Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea. "

Donna Troy to Leave SAP's Global Channel: "SAP's Donna Troy will resign her post as head of the software maker's global channel program, company sources revealed Jan. 29.
Troy, executive vice president of global SME (small and midsize enterprise) indirect channels, will leave the company soon, following a restructuring of SAP's channel and sales groups that brought her team and position under Hans-Peter Klaey, president of Global SME Business.
Troy will be succeeded by Terrance Scerri, her deputy since May"

Siemens Teams with SEEBURGER to Provide Low-Cost, High-Quality EDI Solutions to mySAP ERP Users: "As the healthcare industry’s leading Application Service Provider (ASP), Siemens Medical Solutions provides hosting services to more than 1,000 customers from its state-of-the-art Information Systems Center in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Siemens Medical Solutions and SAP have extended their long-standing partnership to offer a joint Health Information System (HIS) and ERP solution to local, regional and university hospitals across the US. Siemens has the ability to host mySAP ERP in the Siemens Information Systems Center. The SEEBURGER B2B Gateway solution allows customers to communicate seamlessly with trading partners in electronic business-to-business transactions in a hosted and managed services deployment model. In addition, SEEBURGER’s native integration with mySAP ERP allows fast, streamlined business processes with trading partners. "

Integration's The Rub For New Oracle BI: "One of Oracle's biggest challenges these days is integrating the new products from its numerous acquisitions with its existing software.
Oracle (Quote) just finished one such undertaking, incorporating the analytics software it acquired in the Siebel Systems purchase as the base for its business intelligence software.
Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition 10g Release 3 features significant new integration with Oracle's broad swath of applications, database software and other components of Oracle Fusion Middleware. "

HP announces SOA services for SAP customers - Computer Business Review: "For example, there are many large enterprise customers who haven't yet upgraded from SAP R/3 to MySAP ERP, Treat said. These integration projects are complicated, often long-term engagements, involving tens or even hundreds of thousands of users, and SAP doesn't plan to change the core of MySAP until 2011.

But some of HP's large SAP accounts may opt only for the ERP upgrade, and not necessarily the accompanying SOA services. For those customers who are more interested in SOA, HP will provide NetWeaver development services from its heavily offshore applications centers. "

ERP Software: SAP SaaS ERP release for the midmarket: "SAP has revealed its plans to launch a SaaS ERP SAP Version focussed on the mid market. Henning Kagermann SAP’s CEO announced earlier this week but no specific dates on release.
Netsuite CEO Zach Nelson has welcomed the announcement and mentioned that this will validate on demand within the ERP space. 'Larry Ellison once told me that the best thing that happened to Oracle in the early days was IBM’s preannouncement of a relational database years before it was available. It gave credibility to the then-new idea of relational databases and created demand that IBM could not fulfil.' "

Arutz Sheva - Israel National News: "The idea was originally that of Shai Agassi, President of Germany's SAP, the world's largest business software company. Agassi, a Raanana native who was chosen in 2003 by TIME/CNN as its #1 Global Business Influential, shared the idea with Peres.

Israel's Vice Premier told the car companies that the government would be willing to provide grants and tax benefits for the construction of such factories. Renault apparently showed significant interest in the idea."

Bottomline Adopts Oracle(R) Fusion Middleware to Enhance Integration with Oracle's JD Edwards and Oracle E-Business Suite: "Bottomline Technologies (NASDAQ: EPAY), a leading provider of collaborative payment and invoice automation solutions, today announced enhanced integration of its leading document and payments process automation solutions with Oracle’s JD Edwards and Oracle E-Business Suite using Oracle Fusion Middleware. As a Certified Partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork, Bottomline provides solutions that extend the capabilities of transactional document composition, automated routing, delivery and retrieval to thousands of Oracle customers worldwide.
Oracle Fusion Middleware provides a low-cost method for integrating third-party software and services with any Oracle application. Through support for Oracle Fusion Middleware, Bottomline customers can confidently embrace Oracle’s strategic direction while optimizing their ERP systems with advanced capabilities for transactional document output, including purchase orders, invoices, AP checks and electronic payments. "

Oracle Announces Release of Siebel CRM 8: "Part of the company's strategy appears to be to convince Siebel customers that their investments aren't going to be ditched. Company officials provide a statement from Toine Straathof, Program CIO CRM at Rabobank, who said 'under Oracle's Applications Unlimited program, we are confident that Oracle will protect our current investments in Siebel applications.'
With certification with Oracle Fusion Middleware, Siebel 8 provides support for Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) and out-of-the-box Web services-based integration. This is intended to simplify integration between Siebel and other applications and services and accelerate Web-based application development.
Additionally, Siebel 8 will provide ongoing, heterogeneous support for non-Oracle technology, including IBM (News - Alert) WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, SQL Server 2005 and IBM DB2, to 'prevent vendor lock-in,' company officials say. "

HP's expanded SOA services tighten SAP partnership: "For newer SAP customers, HP will offer an envisioning service based on SAP's Discovery System that includes user education and identifying potential projects. The Discovery System is a combination of tools and standard software components that helps customers develop their own SOA applications. It sells for $10,000.
'Many clients haven't started the upgrade path yet,' said Tim Treat, manager of worldwide packaged applications for enterprise applications services for HP. 'And we don't expect most to do this as a 'big bang.''
For customers who are already familiar with SOA and NetWeaver, HP will offer an assessment service consisting of software portfolio analysis, cost saving analysis and identification of project starting points. "

New Oracle BI suite boasts greater third-party support: "Unveiled this week, Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (EE) 10g Release 3 includes greater integration with Oracle's database software and numerous business applications, including those that formerly went under the names of PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. And because the suite is composed mainly of software Oracle acquired in its $5.85 billion purchase of Siebel Systems Inc., experts say it offers greater interoperability with technologies, business applications and data sources that come from outside the Oracle family as well.
'Siebel had to work with a number of different platforms including Oracle, while Oracle's own BI components were primarily targeting their own Oracle base,' said Dan Vesset, research director for business analytics with Framingham, Mass.-based IDC. 'With the incorporation of the previous Siebel technologies, they were able to bring some of that openness -- or "

Open Sources InfoWorld Oracle: No Fusion (yet) January 31, 2007 12:38 PM By Matt Asay: "It's clear from looking at Oracle's numbers that maintenance revenues are becoming a bigger and more important slice of the pie, and, if I were inside Oracle betting on cashing in my options, I'd be placing every resource I could on making sure those Big Four applications were up to date and their customers loving it.
It's also clear to me that no matter how solidly behind Fusion Oracle is today, or how groovy the prototypes look in six months, a solid Fusion-based revenue stream isn't very likely for a number of years. Mostly because it's going to be hard to justify going with Fusion 1.0: Even if Oracle does a bang-up job first time around, the 1.0 curse will keep a lot of customers on the fence waiting for the 1.0 pioneers to debug the software well-enough to make 2.0 the real GA release....
But the 2009 timeframe does mean that customers sitting on the fence about where they are going to be in three years with Oracle are paying a lot for their uncertainty: at 22% of their license fee, the maintenance costs for most customers will have paid by 2009 will be darn close to their original license cost, if they haven't already topped the 100% mark by then....[A]ny Applications Unlimited customer looking to truly cut costs and streamline the IT budget has to ask him or herself what price that uncertainty might be costing. "

Between the Lines ZDNet.com: "However, Phillips seemed to realize that customers aren't going to be a rush to fuse their applications into one Oracle suite. To that end, Oracle also touted Oracle On-Demand where it'll host its applications and combine them for you. 'Our on-demand business is important for us. For anyone concerned about the applications upgrade process we have an easy solution–we'll do it for you.'
Oracle also wasn't shy about knocking SAP. In fact, the first knock took all of about three minutes. An executive went through the attendee roster and noted there was one person named Mark from SAP. He asked him to raise his hand and then invited him on stage for a better seat. The punchline: 'It's ok we're an open company.'
Phillips came back to the SAP kicking later when he was talking about middleware. 'We have more Oracle Fusion customers in the SAP installed base than SAP has Netweaver customers. We try to modernize them a bit and help them out where we can. '"

» What’s up with SAP’s ‘game-changing’ A1S Between the Lines ZDNet.com: "Enterprise Irregular David Terrar goes in depth parsing recent statements made by SAP CEO Henning Kagermann at an event eariler this month. He came away with five key points:
1. The phrases “on-demand” or “Software as a Service” were never mentioned. Admittedly SAP will be presenting a hybrid model, but the product is going to be available web-deployed on a subscription basis. Are they avoiding those terms because they are inventing another one? Is it down to marketing and they want to avoid comparisons with the likes of NetSuite and Salesforce.com? Do they believe that their approach is something different?
2. Wow - taken on face value, if the product is as good, flexible, and cost effective as they say then this really is a significant announcement for the mid-market.
3. This will mean that SAP’s mid market approach will involve three products - B1, A1N and A1S. How much overlap and channel conflict will there be?
4. If the A1S approach is so good, so flexible, and with cost of ownership better by a factor of 10, what effect will that have on the rest of SAP’s traditional business, including ERP 2005?
5. Why haven’t they said more about the underlying architecture of the new product so that the SAP detractors can see that this is a new product rather than an evolution of one of their existing products?"

mySAP CRM replaces Vantive at manufacturing firm: "The Wheeling, Ill.-based maker of document management and postal software recently selected mySAP CRM for its field service staff, replacing an existing system from Vantive, a company that was bought by PeopleSoft and subsequently acquired by Oracle.
With SAP's mySAP ERP 4.7 already running on the back end, the decision to go with the Germany-based company's CRM application was a little easier, though Bowe, Bell + Howell isn't a full SAP shop.
'We're migrating that way,' Ridge said. 'When I entered the organization, we had all kinds of systems. Our strategic direction is to go to one common platform. We did evaluate other vendors, but the integration and capabilities made it an easy decision for us.' "

CXOtoday.com > News > Software > SAP Readies New xApp: "SAP has announced that it has added a new application to its xApp composite application portfolio. The newly added SAP xApp Sales and Operations Planning (SAP xSOP) composite application will be available in March 2007 as a standalone solution and as an extension for mySAP ERP 2005.

A press release issued by the company stated that the application will enable finance, sales, purchasing and production departments to collect, analyze and track all sales and operations planning (S&OP) data in a central location. It also stated that role-based dashboards allow each user to see multiple representations of the same S&OP data at the level of detail they need. "

Oracle(R) Fusion Middleware Certified With Latest Releases of Oracle Applications: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance: "Oracle Fusion Middleware's certification with the latest release of Oracle's applications will enable IT and business users to benefit from tighter integration, a common architecture and management framework and lower total cost of ownership for their applications and middleware investments. The company's family of best-in-class, standards-based middleware software -- Oracle Fusion Middleware -- delivers a wide array of business-critical middleware products such as Oracle Application Server, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite, Oracle Identity and Access Management, Oracle Service Delivery Platform and Oracle WebCenter Suite. Using components of Oracle Fusion Middleware with current and future releases of Oracle's applications, organizations can achieve a variety of benefits including an easier transition to a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), enhanced business insight, tighter security and improved compliance."

Oracle Corporation :: Oracle Positioned in Leader's Quadrant in Latest Business Intelligence Platform Magic Quadrant: "Oracle's placement in the Leader's Quadrant comes on the heels of the general availability of Oracle(R) Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition 10g Release 3, a major new release of Oracle's comprehensive, standards-based suite of business intelligence (BI) infrastructure and tools products. This latest release delivers significant new product enhancements to further enable enterprise-wide BI including a number of usability features; tighter integration with Oracle Applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database products; and even broader 'Hot-Pluggable' support for non- Oracle data sources."

SAP Marks ERP Milestone Amidst CRM Press: "The milestone marks 'the fastest adoption rate of an ERP release in the history of the company,' SAP officials claim. Organizations in diverse industries around the world --the company cites Higher Education Press, China; The Department of Water Resources, State of California; Technische Werke Ludwigshafen AG, Germany; and Palfinger AG, Austria -- are using what SAP calls 'the industry’s first business process platform.' "

DoD certification for records management software: News from SAP: "SAP Public Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of SAP Americas, has announced that the SAP Records Management application has been certified by the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) as complying with the US Design Criteria Standard for Electronic Records Management applications (DoD 5015.2-STD). SAP Records Management allows federal agencies such as the Department of defence (DoD) to track and store digital and electronic assets resulting from enterprise processes such as procurement and financial transactions. DoD policy dictates that the department only procure DoD 5015.2-STD compliant products."

But while Mausberg is hopeful A1N will boost sales, he's not over-confident. “I'm also concerned that with the market segment that we're dealing with in Canada (manufacturing) that segment is in trouble due to currency exchange rates. That market we've seen lower buying in the last three years.
“So while I'm optimistic with the suite it's going to start off slow until we build it into more industry solutions.”
Among the changes in the new version, SAP claims a dramatically reduced implementation time by leveraging the company's best practices, which have been built into an interface based on the company's Netweaver portal. Online self-training tools the customer can take advantage off also are supposed to lower implementation time.
Sixty per cent of All-in-One implementations take up to six months to complete, he said, with 75 per cent done in less than nine months. With A1N, implementations “look much closer to one month or two months.”
Customers can also buy a version hosted through a provider arranged by SAP and resold through VARs, who will offer unique service: It starts with a seven day “conference room” consultation, during which the partner and the customer go over the details of how A1N is to be configured. During the evenings of that week, SAP staff alter the code so it's ready the run the following day. After that, the partner promises to hone and help train the customer over the next 24 days with the expectation the application will go live after that.

Labels: http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/Home/News.asp?id=41940

Moore expects that Microsoft will work on further integration between Office and its Dynamics ERP and CRM families. At present, he doesn't see much conflict between SAP's mySAP products and Dynamics. "We generally don't serve the same market," Moore said. "There is some overlap with Business One and All-in-One." Business One is SAP's offering for small businesses, while All-in-One is aimed at the midmarket -- both of which are areas where Microsoft's Dynamics has an established presence. "We expect vigorous competition where we compete," Moore said, adding that SAP is working by itself on integration between Business One and Office. In the cards may be BlackBerry and Windows Mobile implementations of Duet, but Microsoft and SAP have yet to commit to such releases. Definitely upcoming is support for Microsoft's Office 2007 and a version of Duet for All-in-One, Moore said. SAP has just released the latest version of All-in-One, its first product to feature a new user interface called NetWeaver Business Client, formerly known as Project Muse. SAP worked on Muse with design partner Adobe Systems Inc.'s Macromedia unit. The plan is to roll out NetWeaver Business Client across SAP's complete line of software products in order to give users a simplified interface to the applications. "We don't intend to phase out other interfaces, including SAP GUI," Moore said.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9008978&intsrc=news_ts_head

Details are few at the moment, but CEO Henning Kagermann said today that SAP will offer a complete set of hosted and on-demand applications for midmarket customers who want to get applications up and running quickly with very little customization.
"We have to change the business model for this segment of the market," he said during a press conference to announce SAP's financial results. "The main cost driver here is not the software but the services."
The applications will cover "the entire business of a company," Kagermann said, suggesting they will encompass both customer relationship management (CRM) and ERP applications. They will be able to be managed remotely -- both for day-to-day operations and upgrades, he said.

INTERVIEW-Oracle says gaining market share on SAP in Latam Technology, Media & Telecommunications Reuters.co.uk: "Luiz Meisler, senior vice president of Latin America for Oracle, said revenues from his unit in the first half of fiscal 2007 grew 28 percent compared with a year earlier, while new licenses -- key to future service and maintenance revenue -- jumped 42 percent.
Oracle's market share in Latin America for application software, which allows businesses to manage payroll, inventory and customer relations, had risen to around 17 percent up from 11 percent to 12 percent three years ago, he told Reuters. "

ITRedux » Why SAP Should Open Source NetWeaver: "Today, I got a chance to spend some time with Frank Witte, Head of the Global Open Source Office at SAP. What came out of this meeting is further validation for an idea that was lingering in the back of my mind as of late: SAP should open source NetWeaver."

"Prior to that announcement many customers were waiting for 'the next release' to adopt," Masney said. "With the clear market message that there's not going to be a 'next release' until 2010, we are seeing a large uptick in 2007 in the number of upgrades that customers are undertaking due to this predictability."
In addition, many customers who have not upgraded from older versions are coming off maintenance plans. SAP's "5-1-2" maintenance strategy -- five years of maintenance, one year of extended maintenance for an additional 2% and two years for an additional 4% above the annual maintenance fee -- means that users of older versions are now facing a choice, Masney explained.
http://searchsap.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid21_gci1240210,00.html?track=NL-137&ad=575990&asrc=EM_NLN_934787&uid=1337099

Bloomberg.com: Germany: "SAP AG co-founder Dietmar Hopp said he's ``absolutely optimistic'' about growth at the world's largest management-software maker and isn't disappointed with fourth-quarter license sales that missed analyst estimates.
``For me it wasn't a disappointment because the fourth quarter of 2005 was such a banner quarter that there's just so much you can do in 2006,'' Hopp said in a Jan. 20 interview in Frankfurt. ``I am absolutely optimistic about 2007.''
SAP on Jan. 11 reported that fourth-quarter software sales, an indicator of future maintenance and consulting fees, rose 7 percent, the smallest gain in two years and half the pace estimated by analysts. Hopp, who owns about 9 percent of the German company, said SAP's license sales will ``for sure'' grow at ``double-digit'' rate this year. "

SAP's great succession debate heats up CNET News.com: "'The main reason I don't see Shai as No. 1 is he hasn't provided a success story within development,' said a source with influence over the CEO selection process. 'On smaller development projects, he changes his mind and goes the other way. That forces people to throw away the things they were working on.'
Agassi sees things differently.
He noted in an interview late last fall, for example, that in 2003 SAP began overhauling it product line to run on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that is designed to ease the use and deployment of the software. The road map for the SOA project is set to be completed this year, he said, and the company has delivered on every milestone of that road map. "

Yitzhak Cohen, senior deputy to the accountant general, and the official in charge of the enormous government Merkava computerization project, sharply criticized Ness Technologies - which is deeply involved in the project. Cohen was speaking at a professional conference organized by People and Computers. Merkava is the project to implement a computerized Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) software system for all government ministries, and it is based on ERP software from the German company SAP, which Ness represents in Israel.

"It is not a good situation when the representative of SAP is also managing the product and implementing it. I am not receiving good enough service and support in porting the system to Hebrew [localization - G.G.] and in adapting SAP to Merkava; because of problems in upgrading, lack of support and lack of localization, we are not succeeding in advancing with the Merkava project," said Cohen.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/815295.html

SAP Sags on Slower Growth: "But it's not just tough prices from Oracle that could be giving SAP trouble. The California maker of databases and corporate applications has spent the last few years bulking up with massive acquisitions and now appears to be taking market share from SAP, according to JMP Securities. What's more, says JMP analyst Patrick Walravens, 'SAP's product message has become convoluted.' Though the company introduced more than two dozen new packages in 2006, 'many customers are confounded by the new applications…and see no compelling reason to upgrade.'
Indeed, this is a common theme voiced by software analysts. SAP has spent four years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing an ambitious new set of 'middleware' software tools called NetWeaver that are intended to link its applications more flexibly to one another and to products from other companies. The goal is to allow SAP programs to be delivered over a wire as if they were services, such as electricity or a dial tone. "

Telecoms and Software News: "One decision we are not sure is entirely wise is the 'simplified' CRM capabilities. Businesses of the size that SAP is targeting with All-in-One can have sophisticated CRM requirements. If All-in-One doesn't meet their needs it will not be adopted (at least for CRM) by them.
Finally, this is not the same product as the SaaS-capable 'business process engine in a box' that SAP showed us in December (see Euroview Daily, 6 December). On the conference call, SAP would not be drawn on the relationship between the two, saying that there would be further announcements throughout the year as it builds out further functionality for All-in-One. "

SAP's 'Big, Big Year': "Some of these enhancements are intended to make its applications more easily accessible to a greater number of users, particularly those who are not trained on SAP software, which, while powerful, is famously difficult to use. To that end, SAP recently hired design expert Dan Rosenberg to improve upon and develop a single, cross-platform user interface. The company also did extensive user testing of the final design. While these two moves may seem obvious, SAP executives acknowledged they were uncharacteristic for the company.
The new user interface, Netweaver Business Client, is a wrapper for SAP's underlying platform, which is based on SOA(define). Web services is another differentiator that SAP hopes to sell into the mid-market. "

SAP Launches New All-in-One Version - CIO Tech Informer - News - CIO: "The new version is a scaled-down version of the company’s latest ERP application, mySAP ERP 2005, which includes its road map for enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA).
Usability was a top priority in the development of the new All-in-One for small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), according to Michael Schmitt, senior vice president of SME at SAP."

Hyderabad based Super Gas goes live on mySAP ERP to improve operational efficiencies - India PRwire: "Super Gas, a Hyderabad based global player in LPG distribution and part of $19 billion SHV Holding’s group, announced that it has gone live on mySAP ERP, in its quest to improve its operational efficiencies and streamline its business processes. Super Gas will leverage mySAP ERP to enhance its expertise in providing uninterrupted distribution of LPG to industrial, automotive, commercial and domestic segments. Super Gas has managed to achieve this ‘Go Live’ in 6 months covering 7 modules in 25 Locations simultaneously.
Super Gas has deployed mySAP ERP to automate and streamline its key business processes - from sales and customer service to logistics, finance, and reporting. The solution has been designed to deliver - improved inventory management, balanced supply chain, enhanced partner collaboration and optimized customer sales and service. The solution will also improve visibility and control across processes at Super Gas, and help the organization to innovate for growth by quickly adapting its processes and systems to changing market conditions."

Saregama becomes the first Media-Entertainment Company in India to implement SAP solutions for its Intellectual Property Management - Selects mySAP Business Suite & SAP Intellectual Property Management module - India PRwire: "The SAP implementation would enable Saregama with an integrated, scalable software solution to facilitate business decisions. This would also enable effective resource management including integrated Intellectual Property Management and working capital management.
SAP’s Intellectual Property Management solution will provide efficient, end-to-end support for all IP-related processes such as content planning, content development, rights tracking, availability reporting, and contract management. This will also help in increasing revenue from sales and licensing of all types of IP rights and deliver accurate royalty accounting for both receipts and payments of royalties, thanks to seamless, end-to-end data flow. Besides these, this will help in analyzing the performance of IPs over the entire life cycle, and control the owned and acquired licenses by capturing all terms and conditions on royalty obligations. "

SAP's great succession debate heats up Tech News on ZDNet: "At the meeting, Hasso Plattner, SAP's co-founder and the chairman of its 16-member supervisory board, will propose that Kagermann's contract be extended through the end of 2008, SAP spokesman Steve Bauer said Tuesday.
Wall Street, industry players and, of course, thousands of SAP employees are keenly interested in the outcome of this decision-making process, given that it affects the leadership of a company with $3.6 billion in annual sales. SAP has an extensive reach into the corporate world with its applications to aid companies in crunching figures and managing sales and customer relations and human resources"

SAP Sags on Slower Growth: "It was a black Friday for German software giant SAP on Jan. 12, as shares dropped 7.5%, to €39.00 ($50.38) in heavy trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. That followed a 10.5% plunge in SAP's U.S.-traded ADRs on Jan. 11, to $48.50, after the company warned that fourth-quarter software license sales grew more slowly than expected.
The shortfall wasn't huge—SAP (SAP) says licenses for its corporate software packages, a leading indicator of future growth, climbed 7%, to €1.26 billion ($1.6 billion) vs. expectations for a 9% rise. All told, revenues for the quarter should come in at €2.95 billion ($3.8 billion), almost precisely what Wall Street was expecting. Operating profits were in line with consensus estimates, while per-share earnings were slightly above forecasts, due to tax effects."

SAP's CEO may need to open up corporate wallet - MarketWatch: "It's not as though CEO Kagermann hasn't tried the acquisition route.
SAP attempted to buy its way into one vertical market when it made a bid for Retek Inc. in 2005. But after topping Oracle's initial bid for the retail-software maker, SAP relented after Ellison raised its offer to $640 million.
That kind of aggressive strategy is partly why Oracle's expected revenue growth for this fiscal year is 20%, significantly higher than SAP's now-estimated 11%. "

Technology News: CRM Industry News: SAP to Miss Revenue Targets: "Late last year, SAP cautioned it would register growth at the lower end of the scale. Now, it has announced that its software revenue is likely to increase by just 7 percent in Q4. The company expects full-year 2006 software revenue to increase 11 percent -- or 13.5 percent at constant currencies -- compared to full-year 2005 software revenue.
It is a sharp letdown for the company -- as well as its shareholders -- considering that at the beginning of 2006, CEO Henning Kagermann predicted that it would be a cornerstone year for the company. "

SAP Again Warns of Sales Shortfall on Managing Automation: "For the second time in six months, enterprise software market leader SAP yesterday surprised analysts by predicting that some of its 2006 financial results will fall short of expectations.
In a preliminary financial statement, SAP said its revenues from software for the fourth quarter ended December 31 will be about €1.26 billion, an increase of about 7% compared to software revenue from the year-earlier period (or about 12% in constant currencies)."

SAP's great succession debate heats up CNET News.com: "Apotheker, the 53-year-old president of customer solutions and operations, has gained more support among the supervisory board members over the past six months as a potential successor to Henning, said sources with influence over the CEO selection process. Before that, the sources said, a large percentage of the board members remained undecided between the two.
I think, first, it's not about Shai. Shai is meaningless. In the overall scheme of things, this is not about an individual.
--Shai Agassi,
product/tech group chief,
SAP Agassi, the 38-year-old president of the product and technology group, has had several big ideas, but the success of those projects has yet to be seen, sources say. "

andhracafe.com - Super Gas goes live on mySAP ERP: "Super Gas, a Hyderabad based global player in LPG distribution and part of $19 billion SHV Holding's group,


announced that it has gone live on mySAP ERP, as a step towards improving its operational efficiencies and streamline its business processes.Super Gas will leverage mySAP ERP to enhance its expertise in providing uninterrupted distribution of LPG to industrial, automotive, commercial and domestic segments"

Saregama Singing mySAP Tunes: "SAP's intellectual property management solution will provide efficient, end-to-end support for all IP-related processes such as content planning, content development, rights tracking, availability reporting and contract management. This will also help in increasing revenue from sales and licencing of all types of IP rights and deliver accurate royalty accounting for both receipts and payments of royalties, thanks to seamless, end-to-end data flow."

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide: "Software license revenue, an indicator of future maintenance and consulting fees, increased to 1.26 billion euros ($1.6 billion) from 1.18 billion euros a year earlier, Walldorf, Germany-based SAP said in a statement today, citing preliminary numbers. Analysts predicted sales of 1.35 billion euros, according to 13 estimates in a Bloomberg survey.
Software sales trailed estimates for the second time in four quarters, underscoring Chief Executive Officer Henning Kagermann's struggle to keep up growth rates as SAP introduces a new generation of software to make tasks such as payroll easier. Revenue was also hurt by a stronger euro, which reduces the value of revenue generated in the U.S., SAP's single biggest market."

SAP Shares Drop More Than 8 Percent - Forbes.com: "Shares of business software maker SAP AG dropped more than 8 percent Friday after it warned that it would not meet its 2006 software license sales goals because of a slowdown in its key U.S. and Asian markets.
Software sales are key benchmark for companies like SAP (nyse: SAP - news - people ) and rival Oracle Corp. (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people ), which use them to generate revenue from maintenance and consulting."

Oracle University Introduces Oracle E-Business Suite 11i Applications Certification: "Oracle University has announced the availability of Oracle E-Business Suite 11i Applications certification programme. Based on version 11i of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle University E-Business Suite curriculum, the Applications certification requires the successful completion of a series of rigorous online and proctored examinations. "

MercuryNews.com 01/07/2007 SAP exec grows up with firm: "Bidding on Retek ``was an admission on their part that you really have to not only acquire unique functionality, but acquire the domain expertise that comes with it. You can't find it and you can't hire it quickly enough,'' said Jim Schaper, chief executive of Infor, an Alpharetta, Ga., company that has quietly acquired its way into third place in the application software market.
Though SAP does at times buy companies, its growth strategy is more like that of Microsoft: pour money into research and development, evangelize your software until it's the platform for everyone else's programs and rely on partners to fill in the gaps. The strategy has led to 26 new products launched in 2006. "

MercuryNews.com 01/07/2007 SAP exec grows up with firm: "Bidding on Retek ``was an admission on their part that you really have to not only acquire unique functionality, but acquire the domain expertise that comes with it. You can't find it and you can't hire it quickly enough,'' said Jim Schaper, chief executive of Infor, an Alpharetta, Ga., company that has quietly acquired its way into third place in the application software market.
Though SAP does at times buy companies, its growth strategy is more like that of Microsoft: pour money into research and development, evangelize your software until it's the platform for everyone else's programs and rely on partners to fill in the gaps. The strategy has led to 26 new products launched in 2006. "