SAP CEO: BBD A CATEGORY KILLER
The statement from Bill McDermott, co-CEO of SAP, did make me smile “We had the best quarter ever with Business By Design.” I’m with the doubters at NetSuite on this one—that didn’t take much. In fact the other co-CEO, Jim Hagemann-Snabe, said more than “250 customers signed up for BBD. We are comfortable we will reach more than 2000 in 2011.” He continued the BBD has a faster unit growth rate than R3 did. Excuse me. Didn’t R3 have a bit of a higher price point? But dwelling on the past problems is the wrong thing. As SAP delivered its results for the quarter ended December 31, McDermott extolled the cloud-based application: “This is a category Killer. This will change the software game in 2011.” Somebody spent a little too long drinking at the vision Kool-aid cooler.
But for the moment, it was a smaller part of the story that SAP had a very good quarter and a very good year even if the products it sold largely aren’t those handled by mid-market VARs. Even if after-tax profit was off by 36 percent, revenue for the most recently ended year rose by 27 percent over the fourth quarter of 2009. After-tax profit for the fourth quarter of 2009 was about $598 million while revenue was roughly $5.56 billion with the percent changes calculated on the amounts as reported in euros. This reflects an improving economy and SAP was very happy with its performance across all product lines in all industries and geographies. The results show “customers invest in software and are willing to upfront new deals again,” said CEO Werner Brandt.
