Rising Spending Tide Finally Raises the SAP Boat

January 17, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

A rising tide indeed does eventually raise all boats. The recovery in application software spending that has been helping Oracle post decent financial results in the past few quarters has finally lifted the revenues of SAP, which is still the largest provider of applications on the planet and which still supports the OS/400 and IBM i platform.

SAP released preliminary financial results for the fourth quarter of 2010, which include the revenue and profits it will derive from its acquisition of database maker Sybase. In the quarter, SAP said that it raked in €1.5 billion in software license sales, up 34 percent from the €1.19 billion in software sales it booked in the year ago quarter. Including software-related services revenues, the SAP haul in Q4 was €3.26 billion, up 27 percent from Q4 2009. Total sales, including online applications, professional services, and other items came to €4.04 billion, up 27 percent as well.

For the full year, SAP is expecting to book €3.26 billion in software license sales (up 25 percent), €9.78 billion in software and support fees together (up 19 percent), and total revenues of around €12.45 billion (up 17 percent).

SAP did not report any estimates of its Q4 profits because of its ongoing lawsuit with Oracle concerning the now-defunct TomorrowNow third party support operation. In late November, a jury awarded Oracle a $1.3 billion settlement in that lawsuit. SAP has admitted to wrongdoing on the part of TomorrowNow, but still believes that the damages awarded to Oracle are way out of whack with the actual damages to Oracle from the TomorrowNow operation.