GERMAN BUSINESS software outfit, SAP said that it is suffering badly from the economic downturn.
SAP said it saw a sudden drop in business at the end of September as global financial turmoil escalated.
Henning Kagermann, the co-chief executive of the company, said market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses.
He said that SAP was not immune from the economic and financial crisis that has hit the markets in the second half of September.
The company expects software and software-related service revenues for the July-September period to be between $2.66 billion to $2.67 billion.
This is an increase of more than 13 per cent from the third quarter of 2007 but well down on SAP's predictions.
At least SAP can be happy that its rival Oracle also predicted software sales growth of only five per cent percent to 15 per cent in its current fiscal quarter. µ
L’Inq
AP
SAP sucks. Bottom line from someone who has seen more than one SAP installation suck the life out of a viable company. You pays gobs of money, get very little, then have to pay gobs more just to get it to function in a primitive fashion.

Any company that goes with SAP DESERVES to go under. Obviously their executives can't figure out how to pull their heads out of a paper sack.
I have yet to hear of an SAP installation that has been finalized and no longer needs a 12-man team to babysit it.
On the other hand, I have heard plenty of instances where SAP consultants were bought on site, only to know less than the IT guys of the company doing the calling.
There may well be competent SAP consultants somewhere, but there is obviously not enough of them to make a difference.
SAP is a remora company - it targets the big income entities and latches on like to feed off of the revenue generated.
Sure, it might have some use, but frankly I doubt that that goes beyond making a few slides for presenting to the Board.