SAP reports 'best ever' performance with 11 per cent revenue jump

SAP revenue increased 11 per cent last year to €4.5bn in what the firm has labeled its "best ever" performance.

The 40-year-old German software corporation reported a profit of €1.2bn after tax in its final quarter of 2011, a 176 per cent growth on the same period the previous year.

SAP seems to have benefited by latching on the three most popular IT trends sweeping businesses.

The firm launched the Hana big data analytics database, strengthened its mobile offerings with Sybase and its cloud offerings with the continued roll-out of Business ByDesign.

"We extended our leadership in enterprise applications, analytics and mobile and are reinventing the database and cloud markets," said SAP co-chief executives Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe.

"We have significant momentum going into 2012, as our customers continue to benefit from faster innovation, easier adoption and our unmatched industry expertise."

The SAP results contrast to the weak quarterly financials released by key rival Oracle last month while IBM reported a modest rise in 2011 revenue.

IDC analyst David Bradshaw described the enterprise software industry as displaying a "mixed bag" of performance.

"It is an interesting contrast between the financial results of SAP and Oracle," said Bradshaw, speaking to V3.

"You would think the two would be doing equally as well, although SAP seems to be on a roll now, reinvigorated by its new management team."

He added that having two leaders seemed to be working for SAP, despite the unusual nature of this set-up.

"There was a question whether the co-chief executive structure would work but it seems to have done," he added.

Bradshaw pointed out that much of SAP's growth is due to software licensing.

"We [at IDC] have a number of theories why SAP is so successful in the license area. The first is that SAP has done a good job at making it easy for businesses to implement software," he said.

"The other, scarier theory, is that chief information officers are facing reduced budgets next year, and so they may have flushed their budgets in 2011 before their budget is reduced."