SAP targets strong US growth this year
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SAP, the world's leading maker of business software, is planning to grow by 15 percent or more in the United States this year after a disappointing year in 2006, the head of the group's US operations said in a newspaper interview.
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Double-digit revenue growth is the highlight of a good quarter.
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US spending on information technology goods, services, and staff will grow seven percent in 2005 and continue at a similar pace through 2008, according to a study released Monday by Forrester Research.
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SAP, the world's leading maker of business software, may need an extra year to achieve its medium-term profit target of an operating margin of 30 percent, its chief financial officer said.
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SAP plans to expand its focus on business intelligence (BI) software over the next year.
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The company plans to more than double its output by 2006.
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Analysts expect continued growth despite a tough environment.
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There's more to growth than just a high growth rate.
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Net income rose to 291 million euros ($366 million), or 94 cents a share, from 252 million euros, or 81 cents, a year earlier, Walldorf, Germany-based SAP said in a statement.
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Revenues in key sectors of the US services industry grew in the second quarter, the government said on Monday in a new survey aimed at measuring growth in the giant tranche of the economy.
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BARCELONA, Spain  - Europe's biggest software  maker SAP could need a year more than anticipated to reach its  profitability target as it spends on research, development and  marketing, its chief financial officer said on Thursday,  sending its shares lower.
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'Substantial progress in the last year'
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SanDisk CEO says his company has strong growth in international sales, insulating it from any downturn in the U.S. economy.
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IT spending is forecast to grow in the high single-digits next year and remain on that pace through 2008, according to two reports released Monday by Forrester Research.
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(InfoWorld) - As Oracle executives patted themselves on the back for their company's reporting another strong financial quarter, they also couldn't resist having a go at prime applications rival SAP. "Oracle had another very strong quarter," Safra Catz, co-president and chief financial officer at Oracle, said Tuesday during a conference call with analysts to discuss the vendor's fiscal 2007Â first-quarter results. "We had our strongest first-quarter license growth in more than five years by gaining market share," she added. Charles Phillips, co-president of Oracle, said the company had won 88 deals going head-to-head with SAP during the quarter, including customer wins with Electrolux, Lockheed Martin, and U.S. Steel. Some of the business is what he termed "winbacks" of business Oracle had previously lost to SAP, including a strategic win at Wal-Mart Stores. In recent months, the bitterÂ competitive back-and-forthÂ between Oracle and SAP has reached a crescendo. Oracle jumped on SAP's July announcement ofÂ lower than expected salesÂ and cited it as proof that the applications vendor's growth had stalled. SAP retorted that the results were a slight blip and not indicative of a major issue with its performance, which it believes remains strong. Larry Ellison, Oracle's chief executive officer, cites two factors that he believes are working in Oracle's favor over SAP: its Java-based middleware and its aggressive focus on getting industry-specific expertise and products through acquisitions. Ellison claimed that Oracle's Fusion middleware is "years ahead" of SAP's NetWeaver integration platform. "NetWeaver is still relatively new and still incomplete," he said. Oracle's so-called "hot pluggable" or component-based Fusion middleware strategy is paying off, Phillips said. Typically, the company sells one or two of its middleware components into a customer account with the hope that over time that customer will expand their use of Oracle's middleware. Turning to applications, Ellison criticized SAP's recent decision toÂ retain the current versionÂ of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, mySAP ERP 2005, through 2010 and provide new functionality through regularly issued optional enhancement packages. "SAP has delayed the next release of its applications until 2010," he said. "They'll be two full years behind our Fusion release." Oracle is working on a new suite of enterprise applications, known as Project Fusion, which is due out in 2008. By contrast, SAP executives have positioned the company's move to a more modular approach to product upgrades as being driven by customers' demands to pick and choose functionality. This quarter will be the last time Oracle provides separate database and middleware growth figures, Catz said. In the first quarter, database revenue grew 10 percent, while middleware rose 56 percent. In future, Oracle will adopt the practice of IBM and Microsoft and not break out those sales, she said. Looking to the second quarter, Catz expects Oracle's net income to grow by between 13 percent and 17 percent as revenue increases by 22 to 24 percent. She forecast earnings per share (EPS) of $0.22. Those predictions don't take into account any specific charges likely to occur in the quarter.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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(InfoWorld) - Indiaâs business providing software and services to companies outside its borders will grow a healthy 26 to 29 percent this year, the country's main trade association for that sector said Monday. Revenue from exports of software, services and business process outsourcing (BPO) will reach about $40 billion for the fiscal year that ends next March 31, according to data released Monday by the National Association of Software and Services Company (NASSCOM). Export revenue from these sectorsÂ grew 33 percent to $31.3 billionÂ in the fiscal year to March 31,Â according to data released by the trade body. The strong growth in software and services exports is coming from an improvement in India's competitiveness, and the addition of new services, such as remote infrastructure management, by Indian service providers, Kiran Karnik, president of NASSCOM told reporters in Bangalore on Monday. The revenue figure also includes exports to their parent companies and clients by Indian subsidiaries of multinational companies such as IBM, Oracle, and Accenture, that are expanding fast in India. Indiaâs overall IT industry grew by 30.7 percent in the year to March 31 to earn revenue of $39.6 billion, with the domestic market also growing by 22 percent to $8.2 billion, NASSCOM said. Many multinational companies including Hewlett-Packard and IBM have bagged outsourcing contracts from Indian companies. The Indian IT industry employed about 1.6 million staff as of March 31, besides about 6 million indirect staff employed in supporting the large offshore software development and BPO operations in India, Karnik said. About 1.2 million people are employed in developing software and running back office processes and call centers for customers abroad. The U.S. continues to be the largest market for Indian exports, accounting for 66 percent of revenue, Karnik said. Indiaâs IT industry is facing high staff attrition and salary increases, but that will not slow down growth, Karnik said. In the short term, NASSCOM, of Delhi, is helping set up finishing schools that will make more Indian graduates employable by the IT and the BPO industry, he said. In the long-term, though, NASSCOM is counting on more investments by government and industry in the education sector, he added. The IT industry in India is also grappling with the strengthening of the Indian Rupee against the US dollar, which pushes down realization in Rupees of revenue earned abroad by Indian companies. In the year to March 31, exports of IT services grew by 35.5 percent to $18 billion, while exports of BPO services grew 33.5 percent to $8.4 billion. Revenue from exports of engineering services, a classification that deals with non-electronic design services, grew by 23 percent to $4.9 billion.
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Strong business investment and higher exports drove the U.S. economy ahead at a robust 4 percent annual rate in the second quarter, before the onset of turmoil in credit markets that is expected to brake growth.