New projects to stagnate after crises: SAP

SAP Australia and New Zealand is heralding its third year of best ever results, but its president and chief executive officer Tim Ebbeck said that he expected 2011 to be tougher than many thought it would be.

"I don't think that the Australian economy is anywhere near as robust as people think," Ebbeck said today.

He said that critical infrastructure and services being damaged across the nation would direct companies away from new and incremental projects.

Having said that, however, he was ready to crow about SAP's 2010 results for the region, with business having doubled from 2007 to 2010.

Revenue grew 26 per cent year-on-year, with SAP's indirect business selling to the small- to medium-sized segment growing 80 per cent year-on-year.

"This growth is due to a number of factors, but essentially we are a fundamentally different business now 10 years on. Back then, we made the ERP category. It was the heyday of the R/2 and R/3 products," Ebbeck said. "Now, we also offer deep vertical solutions in 24 industries, business analytics, solutions for small to mid-size companies."

The company was moving on with four pillars: on premise, on demand, mobility and data orchestration, according to Ebbeck.

Given the company's acquisition of Sybase, mobility was going to have a big year, Ebbeck said, with many new products coming into the fold.

Customer wins included Fairfax Media, WorkCover WA, McGrath Foundation and Jucy Rentals in New Zealand.

Ebbeck also picked four customer deals to speak about in more detail:

• Australand: SAP stole this customer from Oracle. The company was going through significant growth and needed to replace its very old systems, which it wasn't using effectively, according to Ebbeck. It's now moving its back office to SAP, with front office possibly to follow.
• CGU Insurance: the company was using some SAP business intelligence, but was also using business intelligence from other vendors. When it decided to standardise to improve its visibility, SAP was the lucky one chosen.
• Murray Goulburn Co-operative: this company was already an SAP customer. It decided to conduct a long-term overhaul of its systems, the oldest of which was from 2001.
• Auckland Council: the New Zealand Government put in place a program to consolidate into super councils. Eleven different organisations were consolidated onto one SAP platform between March 2010 and November 2010.