PhillyTablet Inquirer Daily News
Mobile
Home Delivery
philly.com
email
font size
options
 
Wednesday, October 26, 2011

SAP hiring 'a few hundred' here, more in 2012

SAP AG is growing sales and raking in profits so fast, it may spend part of the money buying back shares instead of plowing it all back into the business, the German business software maker says.

That's in addition to continued hiring of info tech sales people and engineers at SAP, which has its Americas headquarters in Newtown Square. "We're looking to hire somewhere on the order of 4,000 to 5,000 globally" this year, including "a few hundred more new jobs in Newtown Square, and 300 to 400 more in 2012," co-ceo Bill McDermott told me. The company employs around 2,500 here now.

SAP says revenues from its employee-tracking, customer-service, mobile application and portable memory software and systems topped $3.4 billion for the quarter, up from $3 billion a year earlier. Profits more than doubled, to $1.25 billion, though the increase was juiced by lower legal liabilities from Oracle Corp.'s long-running software-theft case against SAP. Worldwide, software sales rose 14%; the rate was higher in Latin Ameirca, lower in the U.S.

McDermott says SAP 's product mix ensures it benefits from corporate information technology spending trends: Companies are setting up unified, realtime mobile- and cloud- (Google- and network-) based systems, instead of old-fashinoned hardware servers and services linked by layers of updated legacy software packages. The result: "we're a growth company," like Apple or Google, McDermott said.

So SAP is hiring. Worldwide, and especially in the U.S., "there is a shortage of highly-skilled IT professionals who have a real handle on the new global info tech market we're in," McDermott added. As cash-rich global corporations move IT onto mobile devices, " SAP is recruiting in the Arab Gulf states, China, Latin America and other fast growing markets as well as the US and Europe. "As the infastructre builds out, demand outstrips supply."

What about the people laid off by SunGard, Unisys, IBM and other maturing tech companies? "They need to retrain" and get certified, McDermott said. SAP, like its peers, is establishing training center "boot camps" to prepare workers and managers for jobs at SAP and with SAP users around the world. He sees the irony of skilled-labor shortages at a time when many millions are out of work: "Governments should support training curriculums as a component of the benefits" paid some unemployed and displaced workers. 

Why is SAP buying back shares, instead of using the money to buy other companies, as with archrival Oracle's recent purchase of cloud-based RightNow Technologies (from King of Prussia native and CEO Greg Gianforte and other investors) for $1.5 billion? "We do strategic M&A when it makes us innovative" in "future" markets, McDermott told me.

For ecample: "We bought Business Objects, and that made us number one in business analytics," at a time when "companies have to be able to google their data and get realtime insights about customer, data and marketing operations or they're going to lose." Likewise "we bought Sybase and it made us number one in mobile" business enterprise software applications.

"When we can acquire high-growth innovation-based companies, we're not averse to doing these things." McDermott concluded. Otherwise, share buybacks and higher dividends to spread profits back to SAP shareholders "are on the table."
Posted by Joseph N. DiStefano @ 2:14 PM  Permalink | 1 comment
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 1:54 PM, 10/27/2011
    Suck it, Oracle.
    — Another_1


1 comments
About Joseph N. DiStefano
Joseph N. DiStefano writes this blog to feed his PhillyDeals column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Joe has been a member of Bloomberg LP’s New York Finance Team, wrote the book “Comcasted,” taught writing at St. Joseph’s University, and studied economics and history at Penn. Reach Joe at 215-854-5194 and JoeD@phillynews.com
Advertise Here