SAP will be posting its fourthquarter 2008 results tomorrow,
amid speculation that the enterprise software business is being hit
hard because businesses are deferring upgrades to their enterprise
resource planning systems.
Following its
third quarter results posted in October 2008, SAP said it would
no longer publishrevenue for its non-accounting software separately
from its accounting software.
Some industry observers have taken this statement to suggest
that SAP will experience a
shortfall in its licence revenue for its fourth quarter
2008.
In a posting on the SeekingAlpha blog
site,
Jeffrey Kaplan,founder and managing director of
THINKstrategies, a strategic consultancy, noted that SAP has not
truly embraced software as a service. He said, "SAP and other
'legacy' application [providers] face stiff challenges migrating
their software to an on-demand platform and business model."
