SAP’s revenue in Mena up by 79%

Total software revenue in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) of SAP, the global business software or enterprise resource planning (ERP) firm, has gone up by 79 per cent between Q4 2008 and Q4 2009.

Software and software-related service revenues of Q4 last year, compared with the whole 2009, went up by 84 per cent in the region, said a top official of SAP.

Yesterday, SAP also announced its Q4 and full-year 2009 results, which showed the firm’s total software and software-related service revenues dipped nine per cent globally last year (under non-Gaap norm), while Q4 2009 revenue also fell by nine per cent.

“Our business in Mena is up about 85 per cent between Q4 2008 and Q4 2009. We saw success across the board ranging from consumer products, retail, manufacturing, oil and gas, public sector, utilities, real estate and chemicals,” Bill McDermott, President of Global Field Operations and member of the Executive Board, told Emirates Business.

The UAE and the region is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world for us, he said. “We have some very big clients from this region across various sectors. We also have seen our mid-size and SME firms customer base growing.

“SMEs represent about half of the revenue we got in 2009 in the region,” he said.

Asked what new technologies SAP is going to roll out in the Middle East, he said: “Our process is to offer on-demand solutions, which could include, for example, business-by-design or on-demand ERM or on-demand procurement solutions.

“You’ll also see major move from SAP to bring the business applications on device, whether on iPhone or BlackBerry or some other platform. We believe mobile phone applications are the wave of the future, so we’ll handle the orchestration of those business processes for a company, regardless of where the knowledge worker is doing his job,” he said.

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