Tag: SAP

SAP axes thousands of jobs and bets on AI

Posted on January 26, 2024 by - News

The maker of expensive business software, which no one is sure what it does, SAP is implementing a company-wide restructuring this year, including job buyouts and job changes for up to 8,000 employees or more than seven per cent of the application giant’s workforce.

The restructuring is part of what SAP described as its “ambition for 2025” plan that increases its focus on “key strategic growth areas” – business AI in particular – and to “transform its operational setup to capture those difficult to hunt organisational synergies, AI-driven efficiencies and to prepare the company for highly scalable future revenue growth,” the company said in a statement.

SAP fined in bribery case

Posted on January 15, 2024 by - News

The maker of expensive business software, which no one is sure what it does, SAP, has been slapped with a  £159 million fine after admitting to paying bribes to officials in seven countries.

The US authorities accused SAP of breaking the law by using middlemen to grease the palms of government officials in South Africa, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Indonesia and Azerbaijan.

SAP confessed to the dodgy dealings, which took place between 2014 and 2022 and agreed to cough up the cash to settle the charges.

The US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said SAP had cheated honest businesses by securing lucrative contracts with public sector customers through bribery.

The DOJ revealed how SAP had paid off officials at state-owned enterprises in South Africa and Indonesia to get their business.

SAP and Google Cloud expand their cloud partnership

Posted on May 15, 2023 by - News

SAP and Google Cloud are expanding their cloudy partnership by introducing an open data offering.

They claim it will enable customers to build an end-to-end data cloud that brings data from across the enterprise landscape using the SAP Datasphere solution and Google’s data cloud.

This means that customer can view their data in real-time and maximise value from their Google Cloud and SAP software investments. SAP Datasphere mixes this data with data from across the enterprise.

The pair claim partners and customers can combine SAP software and non-SAP data on Google Cloud, from virtually any other data source.

SAP CEO Christian Klein said bringing together SAP systems and data with Google’s data cloud introduces entirely new opportunities for enterprises to derive more value from their full data footprints.

Euro clouds missing from the sky

Posted on February 20, 2023 by - News

European players are virtually absent from the cloud market, thanks largely to bureaucracy and squabbling.

While companies have been moving to the cloud in great numbers, it has been mostly products made by US big tech. Azure was top, followed by AWS and then Google Cloud – the “big three”.

This is the last thing which should have happened. When GDPR came out in 2018 and with the collapse of the US-EU Safe Harbour and Privacy Shield data transfer regulations, many predicted a golden age for European cloud companies.

Axeman cometh to Dell

Posted on February 7, 2023 by - News

Dell Technologies plans to slash its global workforce by 6,650 jobs which represents five per cent of its entire employee base.

For those who came in late, Big Tech has been making the short-term decision to improve their bottom lines by laying off staff as recession looms. This gives them the excellent opportunity to complain about not having skilled, loyal staff in two years or have their bottom lines handed to them by more agile companies staffed by the people they laid off.

In January SAP, IBM, Microsoft, Sophos, Amazon and Salesforce revealed that significant cuts were on the horizon, blaming the “economic downturn” with managers trotting out cliches like “economic headwinds.”

SAP lays off staff

Posted on January 27, 2023 by - News

The business software maker which makes business products so esoteric that no one is quite sure what they do is laying off 3,000 employees.

The layoff plans were disclosed this morning during the company’s fourth quarter/full-year 2022 financial results conference call.

CEO Christian Klein said they are part of a targeted restructuring in select areas of the company and makeup 2.5 per cent of the company.

The company provided few details about where the layoffs would occur, although Reuters reported that slightly more than 200 jobs would be cut in Germany where the company is headquartered.

Cloud rains profits

Posted on January 25, 2023 by - News

Public cloud service and infrastructure markets, operators and vendors’ revenue jumped 21 per cent to $544 billion in 2022.

New data from Synergy Research Group claims that the biggest growth was seen in infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS).

Annual revenue from these services grew 29 per cent to reach more than $195 billion, despite some headwinds from the strengthening US dollar and problems in the Chinese market.

In the other main segments, managed private cloud services, enterprise SaaS and CDN added another $229 billion in service revenues, having grown by an average 19 per cent from 2021.

Synergy said public cloud providers spent $120 billion on building, leasing and equipping their datacentre infrastructure, which was up 13 per cent from the previous year.

SAP jacks up support costs

Posted on September 16, 2022 by - News

The outfit which makes expensive business software, which no one is quite sure what it does, has jacked up its support fees.

SAP is increasing its support fees for the first time in nearly a decade for existing agreements for SAP Standard Support, SAP Enterprise Support, and SAP Product Support for Large Enterprises, based on the respective local Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Support costs will be raised from 1 January 2023 by a maximum of 3.3 per cent (or the local CPI rate, if lower).

SAP revenues rise by 11 percent

Posted on April 25, 2022 by - News

SAP has announced €7.077 billion in first-quarter revenue, up 11 percent from last year.

The outfit which makes management software which no one is quite sure what it does says its Cloud revenue was €2.820 billion, up 31 percent, and nearly 40 percent of the supplier’s overall sales.

The war in Ukraine has had a negative impact on the supplier’s revenue and could result in €300 million in losses during the year.

Its CEO, Christian Klein, put out a statement on 2 March, Standing in solidarity, which expressed support for western government economic sanctions against Russia and announced a battery of humanitarian aid efforts, including the opening up of SAP offices as a shelter for refugees. The statement also announced the stoppage of operations in Russia, and was updated, on 9 March, with an announcement of the suspension of sales in Russia and its ally Belarus.

SAP scores big Gloucestershire County Council contract

Posted on April 13, 2022 by - News

SAP has scored a big contract with Gloucestershire County Council (GCC).

The GCC has become the first UK public sector organisation to select RISE with SAP to modernise its IT and technology infrastructure, accelerate its transformation into the cloud and deliver efficient services to its local residents.

Enterprises spend more on cloud than traditional IT

Posted on March 28, 2022 by - News

Enterprise IT spending on public cloud computing will overtake spending on traditional IT in 2025, according to research by Gartner.

This rapid shift in buying habits, driven in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, has seen widespread adoption of cloud-based infrastructures, applications and business process services. In fact, Gartner says almost two-thirds (65.9 percent) of spending on application software will be directed toward cloud technologies in 2025, up from 57.7 percent in 2022.

There is a shedload of pressure for suppliers to come up with viable options.  Gartner vice president Michael Warrilow said: “Technology and service providers that fail to adapt to the pace of cloud shift face increasing risk of becoming obsolete or, at best, being relegated to low-growth markets.”

Public cloud services are expected to exceed $480 billion this year. Much of the optimism for this growth is based on the big cloud suppliers’ strategy towards industry clouds, virtualised cloud solutions based on increasing sophistication and integration of services. Last year, all three suppliers announced industry cloud strategies.

Google Cloud expands SAP alliance

Posted on July 30, 2021 by - News

Google Cloud and SAP have expanded their strategic partnership claiming it will help customers execute business transformations, migrate critical business systems to the cloud, and augment existing business systems with Google Cloud capabilities in AI and machine learning.

Under the new deal, Google Cloud will be a strategic cloud partner for the RISE with SAP offering. The two companies will partner to accelerate customers’ cloud migrations and business process migrations.

This means that clients get global availability of multiple SAP services and products on Google Cloud’s reliable, scalable cloud infrastructure and high-speed network, including the SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Data Warehouse Cloud solutions within SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).

SAP projects kick off again

Posted on July 29, 2021 by - News

Enterprises in the UK have been restarting SAP projects slowed or suspended during the pandemic and modifying their SAP platforms to adapt to Brexit-related changes, according to a new report published today by Information Services Group.

The 2021 ISG Provider Lens SAP HANA Ecosystem Services report for the UK found  companies in the country had temporarily halted or slowed SAP implementations as they focused on maintaining operations and controlling costs early in the pandemic. But since the second half of 2020, many stalled projects have gained momentum and the outlook for SAP in the region is positive, ISG says.

ISG Provider Lens Research partner Jan Erik Aase said: “SAP S/4HANA transformations and cloud implementations are now gaining speed in the UK. Digital transformations are helping enterprises meet new challenges from the pandemic, and service providers are adjusting to new realities.”

Skills gap halts cloud plans

Posted on November 24, 2020 by - News

Hybrid IT services provider and SAP on Azure outfit Ensono has released new research into the impact that skills shortages are having on SAP applications and their management.

The outfit said that while organisations have ambitious plans to migrate to new versions and more powerful public cloud infrastructures, poor skills availability has halted many in their tracks.

The research found that 70 percent feel migrating SAP to public cloud will provide more benefits than keeping SAP on private cloud or on-premises. As a consequence, 60 percent of organisations are seeking to go all-in on the public cloud. Yet, the majority of SAP applications are still hosted on-premise.

Despite there being a clear desire to migrate, around 35 percent of respondents in Ensono’s study say that SAP skills would present barriers for their organisations when migrating their SAP portfolio from on-premise. Around 35 percent say that public cloud skills would present the same barrier. Conversely, 29 percent report a skills shortage on legacy technology, providing a real conundrum and startling issue for the future of IT.

Microsoft, c3.ai and Adobe take on Salesforce

Posted on November 2, 2020 by - News

Microsoft campusMicrosoft and Adobe are launching a new platform to take on the market dominance of Salesforce.

C3 AI CRM is powered by the core functionality of Dynamics 365 and is combined with Adobe’s real-time customer profiles and journey management, as well as c3.ai’s industry-specific AI capabilities.

The AI-driven CRM platform is, it’s claimed, purpose-built for specific industries and uses data from any source to produce meaningful business insights. The collective claims that conventional CRM is not sufficient for the modern age, given that AI can’t be used to analyse much of the data because they weren’t built with the appropriate architectures.