SAP SE History

This article focuses on the chronology of events in SAP history.

• Main article about the company: SAP SE
• SAP in Russia and CIS countries
• SAP Acquisitions
• SAP SE Financial Key Figures
• Corruption in SAP
• Work and Human Resources in SAP

2024

US authorities convicted SAP of collusion in the supply of software to government agencies for $2 billion

On September 25, 2024, it became known that the US Department of Justice was investigating the German company SAP and the American cybersecurity service provider Carahsoft Technology. They are suspected of price collusion in the supply of software to American government agencies.

According to Bloomberg, citing documents from a federal court in Baltimore, the Justice Department has been studying the possible collusion between SAP and Carahsoft since at least 2022. However, the case has previously been kept secret. The named companies are supposed to have inflated prices in the supply of products to the US military and other government agencies. We can talk about contracts with a total value of up to $2 billion, concluded for ten years - since 2014.

US authorities convicted SAP of supplying software to government agencies for $2 billion

SAP said the MoJ was conducting a civil investigation into her, refusing to elaborate further. As part of the case, FBI agents and military investigators raided Carahsoft's Virginia headquarters, it said. Carahsoft officials said the "searches relate to relationships with a company with which business operations have been supported in the past."

The Bloomberg publication said that prosecutors are also studying the role of other software resellers and one of the divisions of the consulting company Accenture. Representatives for the latter said its subsidiary Accenture Federal Services LLC was "responding to inquiries and cooperating with the Department of Justice."

It is known that by June 2022, prosecutors sent Carahsoft a demand to transfer documents and provide information related to potential violations of the law. Investigators are probing whether SAP, Carahsoft and other firms made false statements to the Department of Defense by coordinating applications and prices for "SAP software, cloud storage and related hardware and services."^[1]

SAP has changed its mind about replacing 29 thousand corporate cars with Tesla electric cars

On February 5, 2024, it became known that the German corporation SAP, one of the world's largest suppliers of enterprise management software, refused to purchase Tesla electric vehicles. The reason for the decision is problems with the logistics of Elon Musk's company. Read more here.

2023: Investment in Aleph Alpha

On November 6, 2023, German artificial intelligence startup Aleph Alpha announced a Series B funding round, during which $500 million was raised for development. Funds, among others, were provided by Bosch, SAP and HPE. Read more here.

2022

SAP expects the situation in Ukraine to play into the hands of its global sales

Against the background of the special operation in Ukraine, inflation accelerated in the world, which is felt by IT customers in different industries, new challenges for supply chains and the prospect of an economic slowdown in Europe arose. But SAP is optimistic about this and sees it as an opportunity to increase sales of its solutions and services.

The presence of this pressure cannot be denied. But I think companies are well aware that the right investments in digital transformation against the background of high volatility mean strategic opportunities, "said SAP CFO Luka Mucic.

At the same time, SAP makes a special bet on cloud solutions. As the risks of cyber attacks increase amid events in Ukraine, more and more customers are choosing cloud solutions for their business critical systems, said SAP CEO Christian Klein during a conference call with top managers and analysts on April 22, dedicated to quarterly financial results.

Customers are turning to cloud solutions to build resilience in their business, Klein believes. And with the increased need for energy diversification, sustainability is becoming increasingly important.

For the 1st quarter of 2022, revenue from SAP cloud solutions grew year-on-year by 25%, from cloud S/4HANA - by 71%. SAP expects to maintain high dynamics in this area in the future in 2022.

Christian Klein noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation based on cloud technologies, and now, due to what is happening in Ukraine, the prerequisites for this have intensified.

Even before the conflict began, supply chains around the world were under pressure, and businesses - from grocery stores to automakers - were countering an exponential increase in uncertainty in their operations. The conflict in Ukraine has increased these complexities, further showing the importance of supply chains.

Companies will need to transform supply chains to make them more sustainable, flexible and transparent, says SAP CEO.

This is where, according to Christian Klein, the SAP cloud ecosystem comes in handy.

SAP estimated financial losses from the termination of business in Russia at hundreds of millions of euros

SAP in the 1st quarter of 2022 experienced the impact of events in Ukraine on its business, follows from the company's report on quarterly financial results, published on April 22. In March, against the background of a special operation in Ukraine, SAP stopped all new sales in Russia and Belarus. Then the company also began to curtail the provision of cloud services. SAP intends to stop supporting its on-premium products in Russia, the report said. SAP expects that its decision to stop working in Russia and Belarus will have a negative impact on the company's revenue for the entire fiscal year in the amount of about 300 million euros. Read more here.

Ukrainian authorities harassed SAP for the fact that the vendor does not stop supporting Russian customers

In the last week, the Ukrainian authorities launched an active information campaign against SAP on the Internet, trying to put pressure on the German vendor to force him to stop supporting Russian customers.

In early March, SAP announced the suspension of sales of its products and services in Russia amid a special operation in Ukraine and imposed sanctions, and a little later officially warned its Russian customers that it would continue to fulfill its contractual obligations. Among the Russian customers of the company are many large organizations, including Gazprom, Russian Railways, Rosatom, Sberbank, the largest grocery retailers, etc.

SAP says service provision in Russia prevents humanitarian problems. According to the Minister for Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mikhail Fedorov, the vendor provided them with such an answer to their appeal to terminate support in Russia. Fedorov wrote about this on his page on the social network Twitter.

The suspension of SAP sales in Russia seemed insufficient to the Ukrainian authorities, as well as the explanation about the humanitarian side of the issue - unconvincing. Fedorov, who from the very beginning actively sent letters to global technology companies asking them to completely stop their business in Russia, including SAP, now regularly publishes messages on Twitter shaming the German vendor for continuing to support Russian customers.

The official accompanies his posts on the social network with photos and videos from Ukrainian cities, equating the continued support of Russian SAP clients with the vendor's support for the actions of the Russian military in Ukraine. With the requirements for the termination of software support in Russia, he also turns to Oracle and Microsoft, but SAP appears in his posts more often.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy also joined the information "bombing" on Twitter, who turned to SAP, Oracle and Microsoft on the same occasion as Fedorov. Now there can be no "half-decisions" and "half-tones," vendors must decide on whose side they are - these are Zelensky's arguments.

Some Twitter users also join. Someone, for example, writes that as a business analyst and consultant, he will no longer offer his customers SAP as an ERP solution. And one user claims that he has just begun to develop an app on the AppGyver platform in his company, which SAP bought in 2021, but will now immediately stop doing so. There are many comments in a similar spirit under Fedorov's posts.

Major media began to pick up the topic. Thus, the English-language Forbes on March 17 released an article about the unfolding campaign against SAP based on an interview with Mikhail Fedorov. The minister thanked the publication for this material.

2021

Creation of a consortium for the introduction of quantum technologies in industry

In mid-June 2021, BMW Group, together with BASF, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bosch, Infineon, Merck, Munich Re, SAP, Siemens and Volkswagen, created Quantum Technology and Application Consortium (QUTAC), whose members intend to develop a large number of examples for use in industry to create demand for quantum computing. According to QUTAC, this will accelerate the development of technology in Germany and Europe. Read more here.

Fine of $8 million for supplying software to Iran bypassing US sanctions

At the end of April 2021 United States Department of Justice , it reported that SAP had admitted to deliveries software To Iran bypassing sanctions. USA Thus, SAP became the first company to voluntarily report a violation of export and sanctions laws. In exchange for recognition, the largest software manufacturer To Europe in entered into a non-prosecution agreement, the agency reports. Bloomberg

Under that agreement, SAP voluntarily admitted that it had illegally exported thousands of software products to Iranian companies and shell companies outside Iran, bypassing U.S. sanctions. The company also agreed to assist U.S. State Departments with further investigations. In addition, SAP agreed to pay a fine of more than $8 million as part of an agreement with the US Departments of Justice, Trade and Treasury. SAP said in a statement that the company's management welcomed the action taken to address the issue.

In the period from 2010 to 2017. SAP sent updates and fixes of programs to users from Iran more than 20 thousand times. In addition, SAP has opened access to cloud services in the United States. Certain senior managers of the company, according to the source, knew that the company did not use filters to identify downloads from Iran.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) reported that SAP violated U.S. sanctions against Iran by allowing 13 sales of software licenses, 169 sales of related updates and fixes, and 8 sales of subscription cloud services from 2013 to 2018. The total transaction value was approximately $3.7 million.

The U.S. Justice Department clarified that most of the downloads were sent to 14 companies that SAP's overseas partners in several countries knew were front companies controlled by Iran.

It could have ended much worse for SAP if we had discovered these violations on our own, "John Demers, head of national security at the US Department of Justice, told reporters.

He also added that the decision should serve as an unambiguous message for other companies that may be in place of SAP - they must understand that it is "more profitable to disclose information about intentional violations" than to face serious prosecution.

We take full responsibility for the company's past behavior and have strengthened internal controls to ensure full compliance with the laws, SAP said. - We have made every effort to rectify the current situation, and our active cooperation with the US authorities has ensured a mutually acceptable resolution of the problem without involving an external observer.

OFAC noted that SAP SE fired five employees who deliberately sold SAP products to Iran. The Justice Department said SAP hired 15 new U.S. employees in charge of export controls and sanctions enforcement.

In addition, SAP implemented GeoIP's blocking system, deactivated thousands of individual users of its cloud services in Iran, switched to automated, authorized party review of its cloud businesses, and inspected and suspended partners who sold goods to Iranian customers, the Justice Department said.

The Bureau of Industry and Safety (BIS) will require for three years that SAP conduct an internal audit of compliance with U.S. export control laws and regulations and submit these audit reports to the agency.^[2][3]

Building a Company for Financial Software Development

In mid-April 2021, SAP created a new company in partnership with German investment firm Dediq. SAP Dediq will develop financial software. Read more here.

The number of hacks of SAP software has reached 300 cases

Within 12 months, by April 2021, Onapsis researchers recorded more than a thousand attempts to hack SAP applications, of which about 300 were successful. Some attacks were automated, and some were directly involved by attackers, but most of them were aimed at exploiting known problems and vulnerabilities in SAP programs.

Six vulnerabilities (CVE-2020-6287, CVE-2020-6207, CVE-2018-2380, CVE-2016-9563, CVE-2016-3976, CVE-2010-5326) and vulnerability in a security system concern them: malefactors use the unprotected parameters of a configuration for selection of passwords of accounts of users with high privileges by method brute force (SAP, SAPCPIC, TMSADM, CTB_ADMIN) which usually are established in the environment of SAP during expansion and control.

SAP applications deliver mission-critical operations to more than 400,000 organizations worldwide in important industries such as food distribution, medical device manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, critical infrastructure, government, defense, etc.

Attackers need about three hours to research and prepare an attack on SAP cloud applications, taking less than one week on average, Onapsis reported.

They also quickly create and use functional exploits for recently fixed vulnerabilities, often successfully exploited less than 72 hours after the release of the fixes.

In many scenarios, an attacker can gain access to a vulnerable SAP system with maximum privileges, bypassing all access control and authorization tools. This means that an attacker can gain full control over the vulnerable SAP system, its underlying business data and processes, the Onapsis researchers said in a report.[4]

Nasdaq listing of Qualtrics International subsidiary

At the end of January 2021, Qualtrics International went public with its shares on the Nasdaq floor under the ticker symbol XM. The data analysis software manufacturer intends to spend the funds raised thanks to the IPO to pay off debts to SAP America (the amount of debt is measured at $1.76 billion), replenishment of working capital and other general corporate goals. Read more here.

2020

Reduction in carbon emissions to 135 kilotons (43% higher than expected)

On March 5, 2021, SAP announced its plans to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2023, two years ahead of schedule. In 2020, the company reduced greenhouse gas emissions more than planned. This was mainly due to changes in the format of work - employees were at home, carbon emissions caused by daily trips to work and the operation of office buildings decreased. The reduction in SAP's carbon footprint in 2020 was also facilitated by a decrease in the number of business trips. As a result, the company was able to reduce emissions by 43% more than expected, producing 135 kilotons instead of the planned 238 kilotons. For comparison, in 2019, SAP emissions amounted to 300 thousand tons.

SAP takes into account all its direct and indirect emissions, as well as the carbon footprint arising in the supply chain, including those related to air travel, leasing cars and third-party. data centers The Company takes an approach of preventing, reducing and offsetting emissions. So, for example, telecommunication technology is increasingly used in work, and not business trips. If emissions cannot be avoided, innovations such as energy efficient office lighting, efficient cooling systems in processing centers data and alternative mobile solutions are applied. Finally, SAP offsets inevitable emissions by supporting climate projects and working with partners who meet the gold standard set by the Gold Standard Foundation. In addition, SAP is constantly promoting new corporate initiatives, in particular, the company has fixed an internal price for carbon emissions for business flights.

Since 2017, as part of the Science Based Targets (SBTi) program, SAP has been taking measures to limit global warming by 1.5 ° C. While zero-carbon plans relate mainly to the company's own operations, SAP's climate goals cover value chains throughout. SAP has been using 100% renewable energy to power all of its data centers since 2014. And with its green cloud, SAP can offer zero-carbon cloud solutions to customers.

SAP also supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, focusing on climate change initiatives. SAP helps more than 400,000 customers around the world implement climate protection measures with offerings such as Climate 21.

Create a consortium to organize material delivery processes

SAP SE, Roche Tenthpin and announced cooperation, in which they will create supply chains medical a product management system. The companies have joined together in an industry consortium and are working together on an innovative solution. This was announced on November 2, 2020 by the company. SAP CIS More. here

Joining forces with Siemens to accelerate industrial transformation

On July 16, 2020, Siemens and SAP announced a partnership that will help focus efforts and industry experience, as well as create software products. Thanks to such cooperation, companies will be able to complement and integrate existing offers for customers, accelerating the transformation of industries around the world.

Siemens and SAP will develop integrated end-to-end solutions for asset management, product lifecycle management, and supply chains.

The partnership will help both companies combine experience and technology, their customers - avoid technological and information disunity, and will also promote digitalization and accelerate the development of comprehensive solutions for Industry 4.0.

SAP will promote Siemens' Teamcenter solution as a foundation for product collaboration and lifecycle management. Siemens, in turn, will offer SAP Intelligent Asset Management solutions and SAP Portfolio and Project Management applications to maximize customer benefits throughout the product and service lifecycle and find opportunities for collaboration between manufacturers and users.

Digital transformation is critical for industry, it's not just about improving productivity but also more flexibility as well as accelerating innovation. That is why it is so important that companies use the tools and solutions they produce to create a digital enterprise. Cooperation between Siemens and SAP, two industry representatives - not just compatibility and interfaces, but the creation of a truly integrated digital connection that combines product lifecycle management with processes that allow customers to optimize production.

The gap between development and business has existed in enterprises for decades. The interaction between Siemens and SAP will help bridge this gap so that manufacturers, engineers and developers have the necessary information to quickly create and manage customer-facing products and services.

As smarter tools and solutions emerge, real-time access to business data becomes critical, necessary to bring products to market quickly. The comprehensive approach that will emerge from the SAP-Siemens collaboration will enable teams and departments across the enterprise network to work more productively, develop and produce products while maintaining profitability and sustainability.

The combination of Siemens Teamcenter and SAP S/4HANA software provides companies with comprehensive technological capabilities, from product design to decommissioning. For companies that seek leadership in the emerging digital economy, benefits such as integration of PLM, ERP, asset and supply chain management applications, and a more flexible response to changing market demand will be crucial.

SAP: Many of our customers use software with security holes

In early May 2020, the largest European manufacturer software SAP admitted that some of its cloud products did not cyber security meet the company's standards, and said that it would take action as soon as possible to fix this problem. More. here

Sale of Digital Interconnect division for 225 million euros

On May 5, 2020, SAP announced the sale of the Digital Interconnect division, which helps carriers route calls and text messages. This asset for 225 million euros was acquired by the Swedish cloud company Sinch.

The buyer will pay for the transaction with the help of own funds and attracted loans. It is planned to fulfill all formalities regarding this agreement in the second half of 2020.

This deal significantly strengthens Sinch's operating and production resources in the United States, and also expands the company's presence in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the head office of SAP Digital Interconnect is located, SAP said in a statement.

Sinch intends to use the acquired technologies to create a platform designed for text communication, voice and video communication of users. It is assumed that this solution will be in demand among global IT companies, banks, retailers, mobile and payment operators.

SAP Digital Interconnect originates from Mobile 365, which was acquired by Sybase for $400 million in 2006. Sybase then joined SAP with Mobile 365.

According to Bloomberg, the division brings SAP up to $50 million in annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and up to $250 million.

The news agency, citing its sources, reported on SAP's plans to sell this business in mid-April 2020. That publication said that the company had engaged a consultant to assess interest in the asset and expected to make "several hundred million dollars" from its sale.

Bloomberg observers called Digital Interconnect an outdated business, the sale of which would correspond to the strategy chosen by SAP to build up the cloud business and integrate the purchased companies.

Jennifer Morgan's departure as CEO of SAP

On April 21, 2020, SAP announced the departure of Jennifer Morgan as CEO of the company. From April 30, this position will be held alone by 39-year-old Christian Klein. The German manufacturer of corporate software linked the restructuring at the highest level to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, which affects the activities of companies and pushes them to change. Read more here.

Creating an organization to launch the "Internet of professions" on the blockchain

In late January 2020, SAP, Cornerstone, the National Student Clearing House, Upwork and 11 other organizations announced the creation of the Velocity Network Foundation, a non-profit consortium that will develop certification systems using blockchain. Read more here.

2019

Revenue growth of 12% to €27.55 billion

In 2019, SAP received €27.55 billion in revenue, 12% higher than a year ago. The rise was largely due to the cloud business, the volume of which increased by 39%, to 6.93 billion euros.

Sales of licenses for local (non-cloud) software in 2019 decreased by 2% compared to 2018, amounting to 4.53 billion euros. software the German The company earned 11.55 billion euros on support services, which is 5% more than a year earlier.

Cloud solutions and traditional software brought SAP more than 23 billion euros in annual revenue (an increase of 12%), and services - the remaining 4.54 billion euros (+ 11%).

In 2019, in the direction of Applications, Technology & Services, sales were registered at 23.54 billion euros, an increase of 8% compared to the result of 2018.

Sales in the structure of Intelligent Spend Group increased by 21%, to 3.18 euros, and in the subsidiary Qualtrics revenue amounted to 508 million euros.

The largest market for SAP is EMEA: here revenue in 2019 exceeded 12.1 billion euros, surpassing the value of a year ago by 9%. In the United States, the company's revenues increased by 15%, to 9.08 billion euros. The same growth was all countries in the Americas combined.

In the Asia-Pacific region, SAP's turnover in 2019 amounted to 4.25 billion euros, which is 9% more than a year earlier.

SAP's net profit in 2019 was 3.39 billion euros, down 17% from 2018 profit.

By the end of 2019, SAP's headcount had grown 4% year-on-year to 100,330.

By the end of the reporting year, the number of HANA S/4 customers increased by 24% compared to the same period in 2018 and exceeded 13,800. Approximately 40% of new customers in have not previously used SAP products.^[5]

Hasso Plattner sold €100m of SAP shares

On December 3, 2012, it became known that Hasso Plattner sold part of the company's shares belonging to him in the amount of about 120 million euros ($155.74 million). This is stated in the official statement of the German software manufacturer. Read more here.

SAP is reducing the number of research centers in order to save

On November 12, 2019, it became known about SAP's decision to reduce the number of research centers. The company, in pursuit of high profitability, is optimizing costs, but it does not plan to reduce investment in research and development.

The fact that SAP will leave only 5 research laboratories instead of 25, the agency reported Reuters , citing the company's CFO Luka Mucic, who spoke at a meeting with investors. At the same time, he stressed that the R&D budget remains unchanged - 14% of revenue.

SAP intends to cut other costs, such as management, as well as the number of suppliers.^[6]

In April of this year, we promised to pay more attention to making a profit, the results of the third quarter prove that we fulfilled our obligations, and in addition to this, we kept the second promise - we maintained our momentum. Despite the fact that some uncertainties at the macroeconomic level still remain, we are confident that 2019 will be another stellar year for SAP, "said Muchich after the publication of financial results for July-September 2019.

In November 2019, SAP announced plans to return an additional €1.5 billion to shareholders through dividend payments and share repurchases in 2020.

SAP is increasing the amount of cash returned to investors amid growing revenues. According to the company's forecasts, its adjusted operating profit in 2019 will increase by 9.5-12% compared to 2018, excluding changes in exchange rates and will be in the range of 7.85-8.05 billion euros. Revenue of €35bn is expected by 2023.

Since the beginning of 2019, SAP shares have risen in price by a third by November 13, 2019. The company's market capitalization exceeds $165 billion.

What problems the former CEO left SAP with

On October 18, 2019, ZDNet published an article with the headline "SAP is preparing for the next big problem." It is dedicated to the difficulties that the new CEOs of the company will have to face after the departure of Bill McDermott.

Under McDermott's leadership, SAP has spent about $70 billion to expand its Intelligent Enterprise solutions business. Most of these funds (up to $50 billion) went to product development and asset acquisition. The key deal was the purchase of CRM technology manufacturer Qualtrics for $8 billion.

Senior analyst Gartner Paul Saunders attributes the high cost of developing a business at SAP to the fact that Bill McDermott "has long understood that ERP systems will not be enough."

Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein, who shared the position of CEO of SAP after McDermott's resignation, will have to maintain this strategy. And this task will become difficult, given the need to integrate a large number of products and services that the German technology giant received as a result of acquisitions of companies.

We believe that the main technical task of SAP is to make it all work together. Combining all these acquisitions will be very difficult, says Dave Vellante, senior analyst at Wikibon research agency

According to him, SAP connected solutions from purchased companies to HANA in the same way as Oracle does with its DBMS. But the difference is that Oracle has spent more than 10 years developing its Fusion middleware, and SAP has no analogue, the expert emphasized.

He believes that one of the main factors in SAP's success was the development of a single unified computing system that combines financial data, supply chains, accounting, etc., to quickly access information in one place. In the future, new CEOs will have to deal with the integration of products.

It will help them that McDermott left behind a well-functioning company, according to an article by ZDNet. During his 10 years in charge, he turned SAP into the world's fourth largest software manufacturer after Microsoft, Oracle and IBM.

According to SAP's own data, about 77% of the global turnover of funds from business operations is with the participation of one of the company's IT systems. In this, according to ZDNet, Bill McDermott is a great credit. Since he took over SAP in 2010, the company's annual revenue has grown 143%.

McDermott began the company's move from selling local software to launching cloud services to achieve more predictable revenue streams. As part of this strategy, a platform was launched, which by the end of September 2019 had more than 12 thousand customers.

Paul Saunders believes that in 10 years at SAP there has been "a change of personality: It has evolved from a local company specializing in ERM to a hybrid digital company that also focuses on customer service, sales and software delivery. But the problem that has been so far and will remain in the future is that McDermott's concept has never needed to be implemented as quickly as it is now. They have a lot of revolving plates and it's frustrating for customers.

Saunders estimates that SAP offers about 347 products from the Intelligent Enterprise portfolio. These include ERP and cloud solutions, as well as Qualtrics customer software, supply chain and product lifecycle management, analytical, IoT and AI tools.

This list is very large, which leads to confusion on customers. The company shows them new solutions that need to be implemented, but does not explain why customers need to invest in them.

"Big," "complex" and "expensive" - these are the words that come to the mind of most people when they hear about SAP. And the company is trying to get rid of this reputation, Paul Saunders said.

Forrester analyst Liz Herbert agrees with a colleague and believes that one of the priorities for new SAP executives should be to clearly inform about future plans.

They are trying to do too many things, and they have not been able to successfully orient the companies. They still have not shown normally how, for example, Qualtrics is related to their main product, the expert said.

In such conditions, customers are trying to understand what they are paying money for. Lost among complex and expensive options, they begin to turn to competitors.

At the same time, SAP has taken several measures to better interact with customers. For example, the company merged several sales departments into one GCO (Global Customer Organization) organization.

Paul Saunders believes that SAP understands its mistakes, and now the problem has become so big that the company can no longer make mistakes.

They are achieving what they need, but the competition is constantly increasing. The pressure will be strong, the Gartner analyst said.

In 2019, she returned to the management structure of two CEOs. At one time, McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe jointly led the company. Moreover, McDermott was rather the de facto head, and Snabe was the person in charge of the products.^[7]

Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein take over from Bill McDermott at the helm of the company

On October 11, 2019, SAP CIS informed TAdviser that SAPBill CEO McDermott had no plans to renew his working contract and was leaving his post. Read more here.

Intention to invest 200 million euros in the opening of a campus at the Europe Center in Berlin

On October 3, 2019, SAP CIS announced the expansion of its presence in Berlin. In the next few years, the business application provider will invest more than 200 million euros to open a campus on the territory of the Europe-Center business complex. On an area of ​ ​ more than 30,000 square meters. meters will work about 1200 employees. The move to this office is planned at the end of 2022.

Berlin is an ecosystem of technology and innovation of the future, a city whose opportunities cannot be overlooked. Here is a developed, actively growing labor market, Berlin is heard and outside Europe, noted Juergen Mueller, CTO of SAP SE

The Berlin office will help SAP strengthen technology areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain. Its discovery highlights the region's relevance to dialogue with clients, politicians, startups and universities. SAP already has offices in Berlin-Mitt and Schönefeld, SAP Data Space and the Innovation Center are open in Potsdam.

SAP played a key role in Berlin's transformation from its reunification to its transformation into a digital capital in recent years. The creation of a joint campus is great news for those working in Berlin and for the city as a whole. The decision will give a strong impetus to the development of scientific development and research, will create a center for the digital economy in the very heart of the city, said Michael Muller, mayor of Berlin

The Heidestrasse quarter is a project of Aurecon Real Estate Consulting GmbH, which has entered into a long-term lease agreement with SAP for the premises. The building will be built in an innovative style using intelligent construction technologies.

Collapsed HP and eBay investor bought a stake in SAP worth 1.2 billion euros

On April 24, 2019, US hedge fund Elliott Management disclosed ownership of an estimated 1% stake in SAP. The cost of the share is estimated at 1.2 billion euros. After the release of this data, the quotes of the German manufacturer of corporate software rose to a record level.

The company's shares are constantly undervalued relative to revenue growth, and today's announcement lays the foundation for a material realisation of value, Elliott said after the publication of SAP's financial report for the first quarter of 2019.

On April 24, 2019, SAP's market capitalization amounted to about 136 billion euros, which makes the company the most expensive among European IT vendors. Under the leadership of Bill McDermott, SAP focused on sales growth: in 2011 they amounted to 14 billion euros, and in 2018 - 25 billion euros.

However, some shareholders were frustrated with the profitability of SAP's business, with profit margins down in eight years and share price gains lower compared to the tech sector as a whole. As a result, investors began to put pressure on the company, demanding that it improve operating performance.

Elliott is known for buying shares in large IT companies and then actively encouraging their executives to carry out restructuring in order to increase shareholder value. With the filing of this hedge fund divided and HP , eBay sold by the manufacturer of the systems, video conferencings Polycom there was a restructuring. Citrix

In addition, there have been instances in Elliott's history where a fund, having gained meaningful control of a small tech company, then sold it to private investors.

What pressure measures SAP intends to take at Elliott is unknown. Meanwhile, on April 24, 2019, SAP itself announced that it plans further drastic changes in the company, which should "accelerate the optimization of business processes." SAP is transforming as the company increasingly focuses on the growing cloud business, striving for increased profitability, rapid and effective innovation.^[8]

SAP and Google are looking for entrepreneurs to promote a circular economy

At the end of January 2019, at the World Economic Forum, Google and SAP announced a competition to find entrepreneurs with viable, revenue-generating business plans to promote a circular economy. Read more here.

2018

Participation in the Open Data Initiative

On September 24, 2018, Microsoft, SAP and Adobe announced a joint initiative that aims to help companies use their own data better and more profitably for themselves. Read more here.

SAP: Teradata sued us because the company lost competition

In late August 2018, SAP filed a motion in the District Court of Northern California (USA) to dismiss the lawsuit that Teradata filed with the German company in June. Read more here.

The chances of success for SAP projects are 50 to 50

In February 2018 consulting , Resulting IT published the results of a study stating that only half of the implementation projects software SAP can be called successful. More. here

Launch of competition for the development of blockchain solutions for aviation

In August 2018, it became known that the German corporate developer ON SAP and the airline Lufthansa joined forces in development blockchain in aviation. More. here

Teradata sues SAP for stealing trade secrets for HANA

In June 2018, Teradata sued SAP, accusing the German company of stealing trade secrets that were then used in SAP's HANA analytics platform.

According to the plaintiff's statement, SAP "enticed" Teradata into a joint venture (JV) in 2008 to gain access to the company's intellectual property. SAP planned to steal trade secrets and use them to develop a "competing albeit bad product." This joint venture was subsequently disbanded, and the European company began to push customers to switch to its product, MarketWatch reports with reference to the Teradata message.

Teradata asks the court to ban the illegal actions of SAP and demands payment of monetary compensation, including for the use of allegedly stolen technologies and legal costs. How much Teradata wants to recover from the defendant is not specified. The company claims to have lost customers, revenue and market share to SAP, which has caused "irreparable and impassable harm."

SAP refrains from commenting on media requests and only says that the company is surprised by the appeal to the Teradata court and intends to study the court materials in detail. The lawsuit was filed in the District Court of the Northern District of California (USA).

Teradata's claims are largely based on a 2015 publication in Der Spiegel. Then the German newspaper wrote that SAP misappropriated the intellectual property of Oracle, IBM, BlackBerry and Teradata during the development of HANA.

SAP conducted an internal investigation, following which the company concluded that the allegations were unfounded. The chairman of the supervisory board of SAP, Hasso Plattner, said that the HANA platform was developed at his institute, and the developers gave an affidavit in which they categorically deny using software created not at the company.^[9]

New price model after hidden payments scandal for customers

In April 2018, SAP announced a review of its pricing policy following a scandal involving hidden payments for using the German company's software.

SAP previously sued several large customers, including alcohol manufacturers InBev and Diageo, who were accused of not wanting to pay for using the German vendor's products. True, it was about indirect access to SAP solutions - through systems from other manufacturers. The court sided with SAP, raising customer concerns about hush payments.

On April 10, 2018, SAP announced a new model for selling, auditing software licenses and pricing, which has become an alternative to the strategy used by the company for many years and involves paying for products based on the number of users who have access to the software.

The launched initiative clarifies the tariffs when SAP systems work together with third-party vendor solutions, automated processes are launched in the cloud or devices interact, Internet of Things the agency said. Reuters

SAP says that the new method of forming payments has been developed in conjunction with groups specializing in transparency issues. The presented model simplifies and makes the processes of payment and use of software licenses more transparent. It also differentiates between direct (human) access to SAP systems and indirect (automated) access.

In the first case, we are talking about when users log in to access SAP Digital Core through the interface that comes with SAP software. Digital access involves devices, bots, automated systems, etc., which gain access to Digital Core as a result of a person or equipment gaining indirect access to Digital Core through a third-party interface that is not related to SAP.^[10]

Before the introduction of the new pricing scheme, customers paid for SAP ERP systems based on the number of users. As more third-party solutions began to access SAP programs, customers began to experience problems that resulted in additional unforeseen costs. So SAP started asking for an alternative approach to value generation.

As part of direct access to SAP systems, the fee will still be charged for the number of users, and for indirect access - based on processed transactions/documents. The new model covers SAP S/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, as well as SAP ERP. Current customers can stay on the previous licensing scheme or switch to a new one.

As the CIO edition notes, the sale of licenses, based on the number of named users, is suitable for companies in which the number of people connected to the system is defined and limited (for example, in accounting departments). The scheme works worse if the licensee does not know in advance who will use the program (online store or IoT network).

Prices and contracts were based on an outdated method used by ERP when a user logs into the system. As part of the digital transformation, you connect IoT systems and bots, as well as other systems, to ERP and want it to work for you, "says SAP Business Development Director Hala Zeine. - Customers have started using our ERP system and Digital Core in a new way.

SAP did not name the cost of the products after the introduction of the new pricing and noted that the final cost will depend on the volume of orders and the discount of specific customers.

How SAP uses machine learning for cybersecurity

At the end of March 2018, the scientific director of SAP, Justin Somaini, told in an interview how machine learning algorithms can be used to ensure the safety of enterprises. In particular, he described the differences between controlled and uncontrolled learning algorithms and explained how detecting deviations using machine learning is used in SAP to detect potential threats.

First of all, it is worth understanding that advanced algorithms belong to two types: controlled and uncontrolled learning. When these algorithms are used for security, terms such as "machine learning," "deep learning," "artificial intelligence" are usually heard, however most are used simply to identify deviations that are not always security threats. Typically, uncontrolled machine learning algorithms are used to detect deviations.

Much more interesting are controlled learning algorithms; they are used to evaluate deviations. The use of algorithms that detect deviations similar to already known safety problems should be accompanied by filtering of the results. The effectiveness of controlled learning algorithms is never 100% and usually varies from 50% to 90% even with the very high quality of the algorithm. Still, his actions should be watched by a person approving or rejecting the results obtained by the algorithm - this is why they are called controlled learning algorithms. Importantly, these algorithms are used on a par with other, traditional security techniques such as regular expressions and correlation rules.

Somaini believes that machine learning algorithms will soon be used everywhere, but this does not exclude a number of related problems. Most networks are different from each other, so each security algorithm must be trained individually. Thus, each algorithm needs to analyze huge amounts of data for a specific environment, and SAP needs to have a team of researchers who can present this data and programmers who work directly with algorithms. Somaini believes that SAP is incredibly lucky, as the company employs specialists of both profiles.

In addition, there is another problem, Somaini notes: there is a range of tasks that are not so difficult to teach neural networks, but along with them there are tasks that are almost impossible to teach algorithms to cope with. You can train the neural network to track thousands of different attacks, for example, cross-site scripting, one after another, separately, but creating an algorithm that can identify the intruder in the network is a completely different issue that requires long and painstaking work and which even in this case can not always get a solution.

As for attacks by hackers who try to gain illegal access to the system by masquerading as a user or operator, machine learning algorithms are able to help in this case, but not directly, Somaini said. He cited SAP algorithms as an example, which the company implements in business applications not only to speed up their work, but also to ensure security. These algorithms monitor the application of information received through the application and can, for example, determine that the customer service representative has changed the client's email address. Thus, machine learning algorithms can identify fraud - they are not able to stop such attacks, but are able to prevent their unpleasant consequences.^[11]

Settlement with InBev of piracy dispute

In March 2018, it became known about the settlement of the Anheuser-Busch InBev lawsuit with SAP, which accused the world's largest brewing company of piracy. Read more here.

The most expensive brand in Germany

In January 2018, software giant SAP was recognized as the most expensive brand in Germany. The company topped the ranking, which includes the 50 most expensive German brands, which for the first time amounted to the advertising and communication holding WPP and the marketing agency Kantar Millward Brown.

Experts estimated the value of the SAP brand at almost $49 billion, which allowed the company to take first place. In second place is the German operator Deutsche Telekom with a result of more than $39 billion. Next are the leading automotive brands in Germany - BMW Group ($24.6 billion) and Mercedes-Benz ($23.6 billion), and closed the top 5 transport and logistics company DHL ($18.3 billion).

In addition, the top ten included the Siemens concern, the German supermarket chain Aldi, the manufacturer of sports goods Adidas, the technology giant Bosch and the automaker Audi.

The total value of the 50 leading German brands amounted to $305.7 billion, and in this indicator Germany was significantly ahead of other European countries. In particular, the UK lagged behind in terms of the value of the largest brands by $70 billion, and the gap in a similar rating with French companies exceeded $60 billion.

Among the 19 categories considered in the study, the most representative in terms of brand value was a subgroup of German automakers (BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Porsche and Volkswagen) with a total result of $66.6 billion. Technology companies are in second place with $48.9 billion, and telecommunications providers are in third ($41.9 billion).

The largest German brands are showing impressive results, and many countries will envy the rating of Germany's leading brands, "said Bernd Buechner, managing director of the German division of Kantar Millward Brown.

At the same time, the specialist noted the lag of German companies in terms of innovation and urged vendors to be more active in this direction.^[12]

2017

Criticism of executive salaries

In May 2017, SAP shareholders criticized the remuneration system of top managers of the company, believing that executives earn too much. The board of directors is confident in the opposite.

Consulting firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis recommended that SAP shareholders oppose the supervisory board's actions because the company did not respond to investor concerns about excessively high salaries.

The unwillingness of the supervisory board to recognize any need to improve the situation indicates a serious lack of effective management practice at the supervisory board level, the ISS said.

In 2016, Bill McDermott earned about 15.6 million euros as CEO of SAP, the highest among German company executives. However, McDermott's income matches the level of directors of US rival companies SAP.

Our payments to directors should be considered in comparison with other software companies and be competitive. In our opinion, we have a reasonable system, "said Hasso Plattner, chairman of the board of directors and co-founder of SAP.

SAP was not the first European company to have its executive pay system criticized. In April 2017, shareholders canceled the remuneration payment method introduced by the Munich Re Group insurance company, and the salary of the CEO of the BP energy group was reduced by 40% in 2016 after dissatisfaction with shareholders.

About 20% of SAP securities are owned by co-founders and their families, and 56% are owned by institutional investors. Hasso Plattner has a 7.1 percent stake, the value of which is estimated at more than 8 billion euros.^[13]

Launch business applications in the Google cloud

On March 8, 2017, SAP announced a partnership with Google, in which the German company's corporate solutions will be launched in the cloud of an American partner. The collaboration was announced at the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco (California, USA).

Under the terms of the agreement, the SAP HANA data storage and processing system, as well as some other SAP business applications, will operate in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) infrastructure. This enables SAP customers to receive real-time insights from the Big Data they generate globally.

In addition, SAP HANA users will be able to run the database on laptops other computers with a small amount of memory using optimized, ON as well as perform more complex tasks in the Google cloud platform, the agency said. Reuters

We plan to integrate SAP programs into offers for corporate clients from Google, "said Bernd Leukert, head of SAP Products & Innovation.

Meanwhile, Google is working to integrate SAP cloud technologies with its own G Suite applications (Google Gmail, Docs, Drive, Sheets, Slides, etc.), so that corporate customers can easily access these services from any device and anywhere. The functionality of Google products will also expand: for example, it will be possible to link e-mails, search for contacts in the address book and create new tasks right in Gmail.

SAP plans to promote G Suite applications among its customers, whose number by the beginning of March 2017 exceeds 345 thousand, including about 90% of the world's 2,000 largest companies.^[14]

2016

As of the end of 2016, SAP has about 345,000 customers in 180 countries. The number of partners of the company in the world is 12.1 thousand, and the audience of users working with SAP products by cloud subscription exceeds 110 million.

Partnership with Apple in the corporate gadget market

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Integration of Kaspersky Lab solutions into products

On April 13, 2016, it became known that Kaspersky Lab products would be built into SAP solutions. Joint efforts of the company will protect industrial enterprises. Read more here.

2015

How cloud subscription sales are growing in SAP

In mid-August 2015, ZDNet published excerpts from an interview with an SAP top manager who spoke about the company's growing cloud subscription sales. Revenue from the sale of software under this scheme is also increasing among other software manufacturers, including Microsoft and Red Hat.

According to Robert Enslin, president of SAP for customer service around the world, modern companies are increasingly gravitating towards a subscription model of software distribution, since it is effective for users and allows you not to get attached to the product for a long time and pay only for what the client really needs.

"Currently, a significant part of our business is based in the cloud and we are seeing a very rapid transition to subscriptions. If you look at our local software, here sales are either not growing or slightly declining. In the dynamic world we live in now, companies are skyrocketing, falling and embracing new markets. Business is changing, and against the background of this subscription, they are a means of adapting to the types of business models that we see in the modern business world, "said Enslin

.

In the second quarter of 2015, SAP revenues from cloud subscriptions and related support services jumped 129% compared to a year ago, reaching 552 million euros.

Much of SAP's cloud business is centered around the HANA platform. By the end of June 2015, it was used by 7,200 customers around the world, in a year the audience doubled. At the same time, SAP is not the only company with a growing business in the field of software subscriptions.

So, in April-June 2015, Red Hat increased subscription sales by 14% to $425 million. Salesforce's revenue in this market for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2015 reached $5 billion.

During the reporting three-month period, which ended on February 28, 2015, sales of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS solutions from Oracle jumped 29% to $527 million.

Finally, Microsoft can boast that in the fourth fiscal quarter (corresponding to the second calendar in 2015) it increased the number of Office 365 Home and Personal subscribers by 3 million, and their total number reached 15.2 million. At the same time, the volume of revenue from the provision of corporate cloud services by the corporation grew by 88%.^[15]

Almost all SAP products contain vulnerabilities

On May 5, 2015, Onapsis, a solution security audit company, SAP announced that almost all German vendor systems have security holes that attackers can exploit.

According to Onapsis experts, more than 95% of SAP enterprise solutions deployed in companies around the world contain vulnerabilities that could lead to complete compromise of business data and processes.

According to security experts, vulnerabilities in SAP systems appeared a few years ago

The seriousness of this problem lies in the fact that SAP serves over 250 thousand customers around the world, including 87% of the largest public companies included in the Forbes Global 2000 rating.

Most often, SAP systems are attacked through customer and vendor portals. By exploiting critical vulnerabilities, hackers gain access to the SAP Portal and SAP Process Integration platforms that are used to integrate business applications.

The second most popular type of attack is due to the fact that cybercriminals, through proprietary SAP protocols, execute operating system commands with SAP administrator rights and exploit a vulnerability in the SAP Gateway RFC module.

In addition, it is possible to steal data through interconnected systems, when hackers first attack a less secure and important component in order to get to a critical structure.

According to the head of Onapsis, Mariano Nunez, many of the current SAP vulnerabilities have existed for several years, and it is surprising that the manufacturer is in no hurry to fix them.

In 2014, SAP released 391 patches designed to address security flaws in its products. Half of these updates had a high installation priority.

Onapsis notes that it takes about 12 months to fix the vulnerability in SAP, and companies install these patches about six months after their release. This slowness of enterprises and organizations is due to the fact that SAP systems, as a rule, operate in the background and are responsible for key functions in the company, so IT professionals prefer not to rush to install security updates so as not to suddenly disrupt the systems.^[16]

SAP denies cooperation with US intelligence agencies

In mid-March 2015, SAP officially denied rumors about the company's complicity with the American special services. In addition, the German software manufacturer denies the use of any secretive mechanisms in its products that provide surveillance of users.^[17]

In the spring of 2015, the German broadcasting corporation MDR announced that the American company National Security Services (NS2), owned by SAP and serving a number of government customers, allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect data on vendor customers. The same goes for Inxight, which went to SAP with Business Objects, which was bought in 2007.

According to media reports, SAP contracts concluded since 2007 and acquisitions made by the company (especially Sybase in 2010) led to the fact that the Hana platform was open to espionage activities carried out by the NSA.

SAP head denies cooperation with US intelligence agencies

In response to these allegations in the press, SAP Chief Executive Officer Bill McDermott made the following statement:

"The subsidiaries we set up to work with government organizations in the United States and other countries are independently managed and monitored by independent auditors. Reports that this scheme allows access to client data are not true.

According to McDermott, SAP did not implement any "backdoors" (codes for hidden access to private information) in its software, which eliminates the possibility of third-party access to client information.

"SAP monitors the privacy and security of data like no other company," assured a top manager of the German vendor.

The activities of US companies and local representative offices of foreign firms have become the subject of close attention around the world after former US intelligence officer Edward Snowden spoke about illegal surveillance conducted by the NSA via the Internet. After that, some large IT corporations, such as Apple and Google, began to openly talk about requests for disclosure of personal data by the authorities.

SAP chief reassures investors

On February 11, 2015, The Wall Street Journal published part of an interview with SAPBill Chief Executive Officer Bill McDermott. During a conversation with a journalist, the head of a German company said that the cloud strategy would become truly profitable in the coming years.^[18]

SAP receives most of its revenue from the implementation of traditional software installed on computers, but the company is actively increasing its cloud business. The vendor's turnover from it exceeded 1 billion euros in 2014, an increase of 56% compared to 2013. Increased attention to the clouds is negatively affecting the profitability of SAP's business: the company has already canceled its forecast for 35 percent profit margins in 2017, which caused concern among investors.

They shouldn't be nervous, says Bill McDermott, as SAP remains a growing company (its revenue climbed 4% in 2014) that boosts absolute operating profit by effectively managing its costs. The top manager urged shareholders to be patient, promising that in the long term the company will be able to increase capital through current investments in the cloud.

SAP chief reassures investors by promising to boost capital with ongoing cloud investment

The head of SAP said that over the past five years, the company has invested about $50 billion in the development of innovations, including the purchase of third-party firms. The largest acquisition was made in 2014, when Internet software developer Concur Technologies was acquired for $8.3 billion. After numerous cash injections, SAP got what it wanted and is now not planning big deals, McDermott said.

He also admitted that he is absolutely not worried about the fact that SAP has to work in conditions of strong competition in the cloud market. According to the general director of the German manufacturer, competitors should be worried, since they are opposed to such complex solutions as SAP S/4HANA, which allow them to form an entire company in the cloud that can predict and simulate all the nuances in the field of financial activities.

2014

SAP intends to maintain independence

On December 6, 2014, SAP Chief Executive Bill McDermott stated that the company would not become a subject for mergers and acquisitions (Mergers and Acquisitions, M&A). At the same time, the manufacturer of corporate software himself does not spare money on purchases of third-party assets.^[19]

In an interview with German newspaper Euro am Sonntag, McDermott said that in the long term SAP intends to remain independent.

'I'm

absolutely sure of that. The best way to maintain independence is growth and good market capitalization, "said the top manager

.

As of December 6, 2014, SAP's capitalization is 70.5 billion euros, the fifth largest among companies in the largest German DAX index.

SAP intends to maintain independence

McDermott's comment on SAP's independence came amid long-running rumors of a merger with Microsoft. In 2004, the companies actively discussed the possibility of merging, but all negotiations were unsuccessful. Then Microsoft and SAP considered business integration too difficult a process. Over the next 10 years, rumors about the creation of one company based on Microsoft and SAP arose several times.

Ultimately, SAP decided to develop independently, but with the involvement of third-party technologies. From 2010 to 2014, the company spent over $13 billion on the acquisition of various firms, including Ariba and SuccessFactors, for which the German vendor paid $4.5 billion and $3.5 billion. The subject of SAP's largest acquisition is cloud developer Concur Technologies: this deal worth $7.3 billion is planned to be closed by the end of 2014.

SAP does not plan to make such large purchases in the coming years, said Bill McDermott.

SAP agreed to pay compensation of $359 million in favor of Oracle

In November 2014, Oracle and SAP agreed to settle a legal conflict over software rights. SAP will pay $359 million to Oracle, plus $120 million for legal costs and the removal of a number of claims.

Collaboration with Samsung

In November 2014, a collaboration between SAP and Samsung Electronics was announced. The companies intend to jointly develop corporate solutions for mobile devices and wearable electronics.

SAP AG renamed SAP SE

On July 7, 2014, the company was registered in the European Commercial Register, changing its legal form from AG (denotes the form of ownership of companies (German Aktiengesellschaft - joint-stock company)) to European Company (Societas Europaea, SE). The company is now officially called "SAP SE."

2013

=== 66.5 thousand employees (+ 3% per year)

At the end of 2013, the company had 66,572 employees, which is 3% more than at the end of 2012.

Europe allowed the sale of "used" SAP software

The District Court of Hamburg (Germany) in late October 2013 issued a decision according to which SAP has no right to require customers to ask the corporation for written permission to resell software purchased from a German vendor .

According to the court, two points of the standard terms for selling SAP software are anti-competitive, said Ruth Hütteroth, a court spokeswoman. These clauses stipulated the need for SAP's written consent to make more use of licensed programs than originally agreed upon during the purchase. In fact, the court decision means that now the vendor's software in Germany can be resold without any obstacles.

SAP may appeal the court's decision, but as of October 28, 2013, has not yet exercised this right, Gutterot noted. The consideration of the case in court began with the fact that the company Susensoftware filed a lawsuit against SAP. Susensoftware is a reseller of SAP and already Microsoft owned programs. She was forced to go to court by the fact that SAP blocked such a deal in the amount of about 30 thousand euros, said the director of the company (Alex Susen Alex Susen).

According to Susen, the sale of used software should be as simple as the sale of used cars, because car owners do not need to ask the permission of manufacturers before transferring the rights to the vehicle to new owners.

"SAP literally says the following:" We sold you software worth 1 million euros, but until the end of your days you are not its full owners. And it is we who will decide whether or not to allow this software to be transferred to the new owner. " This is not a very correct way to communicate with customers, "he said

.

Now Susen hopes the Hamburg court ruling will untie the hands of other resellers in Germany. Recall that in June 2012, the highest court of the European Union, the European Court of Justice - ECJ, ruled that the resale of the used software is legal. The rule applies to both downloaded software and programs purchased on CD and DVD.

SAP raises the cost of support

SAP raises Standard Support prices for all new contracts starting July 15, 2013. The cost of such support for those who purchase SAP systems for the first time will not be 18%, but already 19% of the cost of licenses, the corporation said in an official statement.

The German ERP systems vendor, making this statement, encourages its potential customers to purchase ON ahead of time, if such a purchase was planned earlier.

In addition to standard support, SAP also has Industrial Support, which costs more. A major scandal erupted several years ago after the company announced that all standard support users would be moved to a more expensive option.

After customer protests around the world, SAP was forced to make concessions in price and return Standard Support to its lineup. It is also important that the price increase in 2013 will not affect users of SAP Business One systems.

It is not yet clear what kind of benefit SAP will receive from raising prices for standard support, since, according to the company's CFO Werner Brandt, about 95% of customers use Enterprise Support.

Frank Scavo, an analyst and president of Strativa consulting company, wrote on his blog commenting on the SAP initiative that under normal conditions the cost of supporting systems should decrease over time, since gradually problems in the program code are solved.

Experts also believe that raising prices for one of the types of SAP support will be in the hands of third-party companies, which also do business to serve the vendor's customers, like Rimini Street: they will be able to play on the price contrast. The cost of services of such companies is lower than the official price of the vendor, however, receiving support from the outside does not allow updating licenses: for this, you need to maintain official relations directly with the software manufacturer.

Top management reshuffle

In July 2013, it became known that co-director SAP Jim Hagemann Snabe would leave his post in May 2014, becoming a member of the company's supervisory board, so that Bill McDermott Bill McDermott would occupy the position of CEO in the singular. Jim's selection as a supervisory board member supported 25% of shareholders, the company said in an official statement.

Snabe commented on his decision: "After 20 years at SAP, I decided it was time to start a new phase of my career: closer to my family. The team at the helm of SAP in 2010 has made significant changes, and these changes are currently drivers for transforming the entire industry, "he said.

Chairman of the Board of Directors and Co-Founder of SAP Hasso Plattner also stated: "I am proud of the results that Bill and Jim have achieved together since my appointment as Co-Director in February 2010. Working with two of the industry's top leaders, I can now direct Jim's experience and efforts to activities within the company's supervisor.... "

Although McDermott and Snabe have always characterized working together in a positive way, in 2012-2013 Snabe somewhat went into the shadow of his colleague. At the same time, the responsibility of co-directors practically does not overlap: McDermott is focused on sales, and Snabe oversees the development and development of products. However, recently SAP began to direct SAP software development directly to Vishal Sikka, which made Snabe's operating role not entirely clear.

2012

SAP agreed to pay Oracle $306 million

In 2007 Oracle , he filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Oakland County against a subsidiary of a German IT concern, SAP TomorrowNow which SAP he bought in 2005 for 10 million. dollars

TomorrowNow employees illegally accessed Oracle's internal corporate sites, downloaded from there and then used closed documentation, the plaintiffs said. Later, allegations of copyright infringement were added to these claims.

For two years, SAP has been trying to prove the absence of a crime in the actions of TomorrowNow employees.

In 2010, a jury found Oracle entitled to $1.3 billion in damages for copyright infringement. This happened after SAP admitted his guilt in the lawsuit.

However, Oracle did not receive full compensation because a federal county judge reduced it to $272 million.

At the same time, SAP, as part of the settlement agreement, in 2010 already paid $120 million in legal costs.

On August 2, 2012, SAP and Oracle agreed to pay a German concern to an American company $306 million in compensation for a lawsuit filed in 2007. This decision was caused by the protracted terms of the proceedings and the unwillingness of companies to get involved in a new lawsuit on the amount of payments.

Thus, the total amount of SAP payments to Oracle could amount to $426 million, including $120 million in legal costs.

The agreement between the two companies requires approval by a federal court in Oakland.

Announcement of plans to enter the Chinese stock market

SAP is considering entering the Chinese stock market. This was announced on November 23, 2012 by Reuters.

The concern considers China to be a particularly promising market and plans to invest in the development of its presence in the region up to $2 billion by 2015. "We are considering the possibility of a third listing," the source said.

However, SAP will have to wait until China completes the process of creating an international division of the stock exchange, which is planned to be based on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Initially, the international stock exchange was supposed to work in the second half of 2011, but this was prevented by the crisis in Europe.

In the medium term, SAP plans to receive 1 billion euros from sales of its products in China. By the way, in the third quarter, the Chinese software market grew by 40%. Thus, this region can become the sixth largest SAP market.

SAP is already listed on the New York and German exchanges.

ERP application for smartphones and tablets

SAP plans to soon release an online product codenamed Neo for working with smartphones and tablets, Bloomberg reported, citing CEO Jim Hajman Snaib.

According to him, the next step in the development of the company's product line will be applications for mobile devices.

Snayb attributed the company's desire for the mobile application segment to the increasing popularity of these devices among companies around the world.

He also said that at the next TechEd exhibition, which will be held in November in Madrid, the company will present a new version of Sybase Unwired Platform, which will contain settings that allow developers to create applications and sell from through the SAP online store.

Bloomberg analysts predict an increase in SAP sales in 2012 by 13% to 16.1 billion euros. At the same time, the direction of software for mobile devices can show a record profit of 220 million euros.

Thus, already in 2015, licenses sold for mobile devices can account for about 8% of the total number of sold licenses of the concern.

Snayb stressed that Sybase-based products are designed for a wide range of consumers.

On October 10, 2012, it became known that SAP could present the long-awaited ERP application for smartphones within 3-6 months, Computerworld reported with reference to the President of Global Solutions and Mobile SAP Sanjay Poonen.

It is planned that the application will immediately be available in Windows 8, Android and Apple iOS.

According to Sanjay Poonen, the solution will be called "Mobile Application Management" and will most likely be delivered as an addition to SAP Afaria at no additional cost. SAP does not exclude that it can present third-party vendors to participate in the development of an application to improve its functionality.

It was announced that the application will be announced in more detail in Mardrid on November 13-18, 2012 at Tech ED.

When to expect localization of the solution for the Russian market in SAP was difficult to answer. A company spokesperson told TAdviser that the application would be extremely necessary for Russian customers. However, he clarified that at the same time, for about 10% of customers who would implement the solution, it is not necessary.

The architect of VMware business solutions Artem Geniev told TAdviser that mobility issues are now becoming the main ones when choosing a solution. "At the same time, it is important to note that representatives of small businesses began to pay more attention to mobile solutions. This could be another fast-growing market for SAP, "he said. "Russian business can be interested in the solution so far only as experiments, because the main task is still automation and bringing to a single standard the" economy "that companies have in the asset."

2011

Expansion into the DBMS market

In December 2011, Steve Lucas, executive vice president of SAP Business Analytics and Technology, expressed the opinion that by 2015 his company will be able to take second place (after Oracle) in the DBMS market . To do this, SAP will need to at least triple the revenue from the sales of the corresponding solutions.

The prerequisite for such bold statements, obviously, was the acquisition of Sybase in 2010. However, until recently, experts mainly associated this deal with SAP's desire to offer mobile solutions. The announcement of a new unified product strategy expected on April 10, 2012 can radically change the idea of ​ ​ SAP's strategic plans, said Philip Carnelley, director of research at Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC).

In the official blog on the website of the consulting company, Carnelli makes several weighty arguments that speak in favor of SAP's large-scale expansion into the DBMS market. Thanks to the acquisition of Sybase, the company is still in fourth place on it with a noticeable margin from its closest competitors in the face of IBM and Microsoft.

First, the analytical platform HANA is involved in the company's strategic business, and Sybase Sybase Replication Server ESP event processing technology is at the implementation stage.

Secondly, against the background of growing customer interest in the topic of "big data," the popularity of the SAP Sybase IQ DBMS is reviving - a product with more than 15 years of experience. Over the past five years, revenues from its sales have grown by 400%, and the customer base is increasing by about 200 companies a year. To date, the number of installations has exceeded 4,500, while there is no migration to competitors' offers at all.

Thirdly, it is no secret that most SAP implementation projects are closely related to Oracle DBMS. But at the same time, Larry Ellison Corporation is SAP's main competitor in the business application market, and the German developer seeks to encourage customers to migrate from Oracle DBMS to the Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) OLTP solution. This has a positive effect on return rates and eliminates the need to deal with a rival.

10 ways to beat SAP at the negotiating table

• 10 ways to beat SAP at the negotiating table

New plans for an updated strategy

SAP cannot be blamed for its lack of ambition. Just a few days after the announcement of the acquisition of SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion, the company demonstrated its aggressive approach to selling new cloud applications and boldly predicted by 2015 its becoming the number two vendor in the database market.

It has set itself the goal of becoming the first or second company in all markets of presence. This mission, formulated during the SAP summit in Boston, leads to a new market strategy, which led to the creation of a special cloud sales group.

Previously, SAP implementation representatives sold all products, and the new team will exclusively target cloud applications such as Business ByDesign, Sales OnDemand and Sourcing OnDemand.

Moreover, this group will grow more than fivefold, according to Peter Lorenz, SAP's executive vice president of solutions at OnDemand. "We take these products very seriously, so we want to be sure that we have people whose success measure is the cloud," Lorenz told InformationWeek.

SAP also emphasized the seriousness of its intentions for the database market, especially its HANA in-memory database processing technology. It was launched at the end of last year, since then this decision has been able to achieve sales in the amount of $100 million..

But now SAP is increasing its role and promoting HANA as a replacement for relational databases. According to SAP, it ultimately implements the ability to launch the entire Business Suite on HANA. But first, the technology should be recognized as critical for databases.

Many customers now do not envision SAP as a database vendor. This is probably why Steve Lucas, general manager and senior head of global business intelligence and technology, made a bold statement that by 2015 SAP will be No. 2 in the database market. Its cost is ~ $20 billion. SAP - Sybase - and its ASE and Sybase IQ databases will participate in the generation of this amount. But SAP, in any case, within three years will have to bypass the current players No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4: IBM, Microsoft and Teradata, respectively.

Sanjay Poonen, president of Global Solutions, agreed - this is a daring and grandiose goal. "But we want to set high goals and think we can start in the data warehouse market," he said in an interview with InformationWeek. As Lucas's boss, Poonen stressed that SAP still leaves customers with the freedom to choose databases. But, according to the publication, the company clearly expects to sell its 176,000 HANA technologies to its customers, as do Sybase ASE and Sybase IQ.

Selling cloud solutions to existing customers is also at the heart of SAP's plans. The company estimated that only 15% of SAP customers have acquired cloud applications (from SAP or competitors), so there is huge potential for hybrid software deployment by pairing enterprise internal systems with cloud-based applications.

With revenue expected at $332 million this year, SuccessFactors looks much smaller than Salesforce, which is likely to exceed $2.2 billion in revenue in the current fiscal year. Maybe from the point of view of profitability, this is far from reaching the No. 2 place, but with 3.5 thousand customers and 15 million users, SuccessFactors is the largest provider of enterprise cloud applications in terms of the number of jobs provided by a subscription.

Be that as it may, in the near future SAP will not come on the heels of the Salesforce.com, and in order to surpass Microsoft and IBM in the DBMS market, there is a long way to go. But at least competitors in both markets take SAP seriously.

Snabe's strategy: Bet on HANA

Based on statements made by SAP Co-Director Jim Hagemann Snabe on November 17, 2011, SAP plans to add new, significant product categories to the company's software portfolio.

"To sustain growth, once every year and a half or so, we have to introduce a new product category," Snabe said during a speech at Technology, Media & Telecoms' 11th annual conference in Barcelona.

Having acquired Sybase in May 2010, SAP made an important breakthrough in the field of mobile applications. Around the same time, she was promoting in-memory computing technology on the HANA platform . Sabe noted this, saying, "If you see us acquire a company... probably we are simultaneously accelerating our development and opening a new category of products. "

As an example, he pointed to the technology of user collaboration as one of the areas where SAP has opportunities for growth, but did not say whether it would do this through acquisitions. Here, close partners Jive Software and Open Text would be the natural choice for SAP.

According to Snabe, SAP is in search of new products that will help "pull the core" - basic ERP software products. While SAP is the world's largest provider of ERP solutions, Snabe believes it has plenty of room to grow.

As an example, he spoke about one SAP client who actually used 400 non-SAP applications, and added that today the company is seeing an abundance of opportunities to sell completely new ERP products. "We estimate that there are about one million companies operating in China that need ERP. For comparison, SAP today has 170 thousand customers, "he said.

For most of his talk, Snabe talked about HANA, a database processing technology. HANA stores processed data in RAM rather than reading from storage, thereby providing performance gains and allowing users to work more freely with information than actions with pre-aggregated data, he said.

SAP has moved HANA to the Business Warehouse, which has about 16,000 deployments worldwide. Although SAP still intends to deploy a number of specialized HANA applications, integration with Business Warehouse will help it make "real money" on this technology, Snabe noted. He believes this transition will be painless for customers. "It took the first customer two weeks to do that and it's working," he said.

In fact, Snabe said, moving to a HANA-based Business Warehouse would save solely on infrastructure. At the same time, he stressed that SAP has no interest in joining this hardware business, given the rapid growth in computing power along with a sharp drop in costs.

Snabe did not fail to nod at the rival - Oracle, and its growing family of devices with similar data processing technology. "Our competitor believes that we cannot optimize the system without controlling the equipment," he said. "We're not arguing. We believe that we can control the hardware without the need to create it ourselves. "

SAP provides its partners with proprietary hardware specifications necessary to run HANA. Thus, SAP allows itself to get away from "immersion in a very complex business with low margins, which, moreover, is undergoing transformation," Snabe emphasized.

2009: Customer Relationship to SAP Products Study

In 2009, Panaya conducted a study to identify the relationship of SAP customers to the need to update their software products, the problems and causes of this process.

152 companies took part in the survey - SAP customers (73%) and system integrators (27%). The study was conducted among companies operating in various sectors of the economy, with an advantage (25%) in the manufacturing sector. 66% of the companies surveyed are located in Europe and 34% in North America. Slightly less than half of companies belong to the small business segment (with annual income of less than $1 billion), 25% - medium-sized businesses, and 33% of survey participants - large companies (with annual income exceeding $5 billion).

According to the survey, the most common reason for updating the system is the end of support for the current version, 58% of respondents named it. For 37%, the expansion of functional requirements is relevant, and for 28% - the convenience and ease of use of the new version.

27% of respondents plan to perform only a technical upgrade of the system, the remaining 73% of the project also assume to expand the system function used, and 42% of respondents have extended the functionality to the second stage of the project, after updating the platform itself.

According to the respondents, the greatest problems arise at the project planning stage. The most difficult task is to assess the cost of the update project (it was indicated by 40% of respondents), 36% of respondents noted difficulties in justifying the project budget, and in third place - problems with the impact of the update on the existing solution (31%).

The update project, according to the results of the study, can last from 4 weeks to 120 weeks (that is, more than two years), and these terms strongly depend on the number of users of the system. The average duration of a system upgrade project in an organization with no more than 100 users is 26 weeks, and the project itself is implemented in an average of 395 person-days. For organizations with more than 10 thousand users, the average project duration is 63 weeks, and labor costs are 13,516 man-days.

As the study showed, the use of industry solutions (they are installed in 39% of the surveyed companies) increases the complexity of the update project by 15-550%.

88% of SAP customers attracted system integrators to update projects, while 56% of companies outsourced at least half of the work.

Almost three-quarters of projects will (or have been) started on schedule, and only 11% of companies have decided to postpone updating their business applications until at least the end of 2009 due to the difficult economic situation.

2008: Increased software support fees. Customer dissatisfaction

In the summer of 2008, SAP announced a new program for advanced maintenance and support of its ERP system - Enterprise Support. In fact, this meant an increase in fees for supporting software products, since not all customers were interested in receiving a more complete package of services, but the company did not leave an alternative option.

The increase in the cost of escort caused quite strong discontent among customers, despite the efforts of SAP to clarify the advantages of the new package of services and the promised reduction of TCO as a whole.

So, according to some reports, about 50-60% of SAP customers Germany in and Austria expressed dissatisfaction with the new proposed maintenance package, and ON only 25% of customers agreed to switch from the previous Standart Support support conditions to advanced Enterprise Support. In these countries, SAP reportedly decided to allow customers to choose for themselves between maintaining current contract terms until at least the end of 2009 or moving to a new, expanded service package.

According to the explanation given by Bill Wohl, SAP representative, this solution will only be valid for customers in Germany and Austria, and those who have not yet switched to the latest version of SAP ERP 6.0, and are explained solely by the legal features of the contracts concluded in these countries, and SAP's desire to demonstrate confidence in its customers. He firmly stated that only new conditions would apply for all other customers.

Nevertheless, according to analysts, the ongoing unrest among SAP customers for several months now creates additional risks, forcing companies to think about a possible change of vendor in the future and carefully consider the proposals of competitors. SAP management, meanwhile, said it saw no cause for concern and did not see such trends.

In this regard, we can also recall the recent dismissal of Steve Strout, President of the SAP Customer Community in the United States (Americas' SAP Users' Group, ASUG). He stayed in this post for a little over a year, and his dismissal was due to insufficient efforts to defend the interests of SAP clients. Interestingly, ASUG has become perhaps the only territorial association of SAP users that has supported the Enterprise Support initiative. The rest (for example, the German DSAG and similar European groups) were more wary of this proposal. SAP is now working with the user community to develop a KPI system that will assess the quality of the support offered and the level of customer satisfaction.

According to some analysts, such a large-scale discussion of the new support program is explained by the fact that until now SAP was extremely attentive to its customers and tried to take into account their wishes as much as possible, counting on maintaining long-term partnerships. Now users are concerned about whether SAP and its new management will keep the same attitude towards their customers.

2007: Failed launch of SaaS-ßÑÓó¿ßá SAP Business ByDesign

An unsuccessful attempt to release the SAP Business ByDesign small business solution provided by the SaaS model.

2007: Transfer of a collection of rare computers to a museum in the United States

In June 2007, SAP donated a collection of rare computers and accessories worth $250,000 to the Computer History Museum in Palo Alto (California, USA).

2006: Release of Duet Enterprise Joint Solution with Microsoft

Bring mySAP ERP 2005 and 2006 solutions to market SAP CRM and share Microsoft Duet solutions (see). Duet Enterprise

2005: Renaming to SAP AG

In 2005, Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung/Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing was officially replaced by SAP AG.

1998: IPO on the New York Exchange

1998 - Entering the New York Stock Exchange, bringing new solutions to market in areas such as business information storage, enterprise-to-enterprise procurement, and supply chain management

1999 - Bringing a Solution to Market mySAP.com

2000 - Establishment of a subsidiary of SAPPMarkets, a strategic alliance with Commerce One.

2001 - Building SAP Portals and bringing mySAP Technology Open Technology Platform to Market

2003 - Bring the SAP NetWeave platform to market and Move from a 3-tier client/server architecture to an Enterprise Services Architecture.

1992: Launch of SAP R/3 Solution

1992 - Bringing SAP R/3 to Market

1993 - Japanese Market Version R/3 Development

1995 - Inclusion of SAP shares in the German Stock Index (DAX)

1996 - SAP R/3 Release, Version 3.1, Online

1997 - The beginning of the development of industry solutions based on R/3

1991: Entering the Russian market

Main article: SAP CIS

In 1991, SAP entered the Russian market and began developing a version of the R/2 system in Russian.

1989: Stock offering on the Zurich Stock Exchange

In 1989, trading in SAP shares began on the Zurich Stock Exchange.

1985: Opening an office in the United States

In 1985, the headquarters was opened in Wayne, Pennsylvania, USA.

1988 - transformation into an open joint stock company (Frankfurt and Stuttgart), the opening of an international training center in Waldorf.

1977-1979: Headquarters transfer to Waldorf and first clients in Austria

In 1977, the SAP headquarters moved from Mannheim to Waldorf, Germany; the emergence of the first international customers in Austria.

1978 - development of the module "Accounting of fixed assets."

1979 - Bringing SAP R/2 to market.

1972: Five IBM employees set up company in Mannheim

SAP was created in 1972 by five former IBM employees (Klaus Tschira, Dietmar Hopp and Hasso Plattner, Claus Wellenreuther, Hans-Werner Hector) from the company's German office in Weingame. The SAP name was based on the first letters of the full name: "Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung "/" Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing." The first office of the company was located in Mannheim (Germany). Development and launch of RF-System (SAP R/1) product.

In 1976, Systems Analysis and Program Development was transformed into a limited liability corporation Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP GmbH).

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