Tag: SAP

SAP Acquires Ariba

SAP, a German software company Oracle recently went after for an amended $777 million over copyright infringement, has just acquired information technology services company Ariba for $4.3 billion, to bolster its cloud service offerings.

The merger is expected to be completed some time in the 3rd quarter of 2012, and JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank AG advised SAP on the sale, while Morgan Stanley guided Ariba. In related news, Morgan Stanley is presently being looked at regarding Facebook’s building IPO drama. SAP is paying $45 a share, which is still subject to approval by Ariba shareholders and various regulators.

Ariba offers “Spend Management Solutions” which help companies to manage corporate spending and supply chains more efficiently. Ariba saw revenues of $444 million last year, with a profit of $33.3 million. Shares closed at $37.64 yesterday. Speaking on the merger in a press release, Ariba CEO Bob Calderoni states, “In our personal lives, networks are playing an increasingly important role in how we connect, share, and shop – bringing more insight and efficiency into everything we do – Businesses are looking for the same connectedness, insight, and efficiencies in the processes and collaboration with customers, suppliers, and partners beyond the walls of their companies. By combining Ariba’s open global trading network and SAP’s solutions and analytics, we are ushering in a new era of business-to-business collaboration and driving new levels of productivity.”

May 23, 2012
Oracle Seeks $777 Million from SAP in Retrial

Back in 2010, a jury awarded Oracle $1.3 billion in damages in a copyright infringement case involving business management software company SAP’s illegal downloading and resale of Oracle software. Basically, SAP was using a company called TomorrowNow to access Oracle databases with former Oracle customer info, downloading copyrighted content, and then reselling it to Oracle customers for half the price. The $1.3 billion verdict was the largest ever for a copyright infringement case, and also the largest jury award in the U.S. of 2010.

Still, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton ended up reducing the damages to $272 million, and Oracle has decided to commence with a retrial, and is now seeking $776.7 million from SAP. The retrial is set for June 18th in Oakland, CA. Oracle claims its new figure regarding its damages claim will be backed up by an “updated analysis and additional evidence to support the infringers’ profits and lost profit amounts.” The almost $777 million comprises $120.7 million in Oracle’s lost profits, and $656 million in SAP’s profits.

Jim Dever, speaking on behalf of SAP, states that the damages are more like $28 million, adding, “We think Oracle’s damage estimate is overstated.” Naturally.

Interestingly, the original jury award in the Oracle/SAP case was partly based on a the price of a “hypothetical license.” This is essentially the main point of contention in Oracle’s ongoing trial against Google over Java API patent infringement. While Google didn’t so blatantly manipulate Oracle wares in an illegal fashion, there is a chance that a jury might find that Google did require a sort of “hypothetical license” for portions of Java used in the development of the its Android operating system. The cost of this sort of license could be astronomical. The jury in the Google vs. Oracle case should present a verdict within the next day or two.

While SAP admitted to wrongdoing and that they owe damages, Google has remained vague and evasive on the stand when questioned by Oracle’s legal team. Still, some fear that a jury siding with Google might set a precedent for the manipulation of open-source software. A facet of Oracle’s business model seems to have evolved into collecting on its free software if someone else makes any money off of it.

May 3, 2012
Sustainability As A Strategy: SAP Report 2011

Sustainable solutions are more important than ever, not just from a conservation standpoint, but from an efficiency standpoint as well. Who doesn’t want to minimize waste and avoid poor investments? There are better ways to do business that guarantee better return on your investments while also improving your relationship with suppliers and the world around you.

SAP, an organization dedicated to helping organizations and individuals grow in a healthy way, has released their 2011 sustainability report. Essentially, the report is packed with great examples of how they were able to maximize many of the resources, while also ensuring those resources could still be around tomorrow.

Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer at SAP commented on their latest report:

“Our new report marks an important milestone on our journey to helping the world run better and improving people’s lives,”

“As a company founded and thriving on the concept of innovation, we are excited about helping more and more companies run more profitably and sustainably around the world – including our own. We are proud of the positive recognition we have received for our efforts from the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, Carbon Disclosure Project, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others, and look forward to the ideas and inspiration from the readers of our new report.”

Incorporating more sustainable solutions into the way you we business is essential and SAP provides some vital data about getting started down the path of success. If you intend to to make sustainability part of the plan for 2012, here are some highlights from the sustainability experts 2011 report:

The 2011 sustainability report:

* Shows the impact SAP® software has on the world, including solutions for energy and environmental management, sustainable supply chain, operational risk management, sustainable workforce and sustainability reporting and analytics.

* Explains how SAP increased its own carbon efficiency for the fifth consecutive year, avoiding cost of EUR 190 million since 2008.

* Highlights how SAP increased employee engagement by nine percent in just one year.
Introduces a global target to increase the ratio of women in management positions to 25 percent by 2017.

* Includes both financial and non-financial information as SAP moves towards more integrated reporting.

* Details how SAP’s social investment strategy impacted 1 million lives in 2011.
Is backed up by rigorous standards of data collection and transparency, specifically the enhanced scope 3 GHG emissions protocol.

* Achieved a GRI A+ rating by the Global Reporting Initiative.
Allows people to share feedback, ideas and inspirations both in the report and through social media.

If you are looking to get the ball rolling on sustainability, check out this report and glean some great ways to make your resources work harder for you. Efficient, sustainable operation don’t just happen, they are the result of careful planning and strategic decision making. Get started today, and have less to worry about tomorrow.

March 26, 2012
CIA Changing The Way They Buy Software

The CIA is changing the way it buys technology in hopes to stay on top of the constantly evolving technology landscape.

Reuters is reporting that in a meeting with software vendors on Tuesday, the CIA’s top tech officer, Ira Hunt, told vendors that the agency was changing the way they do business. The way the CIA had done business before was that they would buy all of a vendor’s product through enterprise licensing agreements.

The new way of doing business will see the agency paying for what services they need based on what is required at the time. This will reportedly allow the CIA to take advantage of “emerging capabilities early on.”

Another reason for the change is simple money saving practices. It’s no secret that the U.S. government is slashing spending across the board and the CIA needs to find ways to cut spending just like every other government agency.

The CIA uses software from companies like Oracle Corp, SAP AG and HP that help them look through data for potential threats or other information that may be beneficial to the administration.

When Hunt presented the CIA’s new stance to vendors, he assured them that the agency wasn’t trying to screw over any of the companies. He even offered to let the companies involved take a peek at their operations to make sure they weren’t being swindled.

At the same conference, it was said that current tools can’t keep up with the amount of data being collected by drones and sensors. It’s quite probable that this is a major reason for the change in policy as well. Applying a pay-as-you-go system would allow the CIA to adopt new technologies at a much faster rate.

February 22, 2012
SAP To Acquire datango To Expand Education Offerings

SAP announced today its intent to acquire datango AG, which provides workforce performance support software. SAP intends to acquire both the software and the company’s assets.

SAP aims to use the acquisition to bolster its education-related offerings.

“The workforce performance tools market has become increasingly strategic and critical to our customers’ success, and datango is a proven leader in this space,” said Markus Schwarz, SVP and global head of SAP Education. “By having its own product in this market, SAP can now deliver and accelerate innovations and produce robust content for our customers in the future.”

In an overview of the deal (pdf), datango says:

Certain datango employees related to this business are expected to join SAP following the completion of the transaction. datango will retain employees related to its KPS business (acquired from Enlight AB in 2007) and additional employees required to support and service existing client and partner agreements for the datango performance suite solution. The acquisition follows a successful partnership between datango and SAP in support of SAP’s Business ByDesign product.

Until closing, the datango business remains unchanged and continues as usual. You should expect to receive the same level of professional, courteous and knowledgeable assistance as you have always received from datango.

The deal, while subject to regulatory approvals, is expected to close by the end of the quarter. Terms were not disclosed.

January 16, 2012
Google and SAP Partner on Geo-Mapping

Google and SAP announced a partnership today at the AlwaysOn Summit. This will allow customers to pair SAP enterprise analytics with Google Maps and Google Earth in what the companies call an “industry-first collaboration to help customers tackle ‘big data’ with an augmented reality approach.”

“Using location-based intelligence, customers can slice-and-dice large volumes of information against Google Maps/Earth to get a better understanding of the ‘when’ and ‘where’ of their business,” a representative for SAP tells WebProNews. “For example, with SAP StreamWork, a team of customer support representatives in a consumer packaged goods company could collaborate and pinpoint the location of consumer complaints within specific geographies and make a decision regarding how to address and prioritize resolution.

“We’re excited to work with SAP to help enterprise customers use Google’s cloud mapping tools with SAP software,” said Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise. “This integration will allow our customers to more easily visualize geographic data and make better business decisions.”

“Today, more and more information is being geo-tagged, and it is unlocking an entirely new dimension for enterprise data,” said Sanjay Poonen, president, Global Solutions at SAP. “SAP’s work with Google marries powerful enterprise software with the world’s most popular mapping platform to create entirely new ways for people to understand and interact with business information. We aim to provide our customers the opportunity to tap into the power of business analytics combined with location intelligence through a geographic view and use rich, interactive analytics to respond to events as they unfold in real time.”

@businessobjects
SAP BusinessObjects#SAP + #Google tackle #bigdata with #sapanalytics + geo-mapping: http://bit.ly/q0glTy #BI4 2 hours ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

Running down some examples of how organizations might be able to take advantage of the partnership between these two companies, SAP suggests that a telecom operator could use Google Earth and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer to perform dropped-call analysis and pinpoint geo-coordinates of faulty towers. A state department of revenue might overlay household tax income info on a map and group it al the country level to track the highest/lowest tax bases. A mortgage bank might perform risk assessment on its portfolio by overlaying foreclosure and default data with the location of loans on Google Maps. You get the idea.

July 27, 2011
Verdict: SAP to Pay Oracle $1.3 Billion

Oracle is reportedly being awarded $1.3 Billion from SAP, as the result of a jury’s verdict following an 11-day trial. The case dates back to 2007 when Orcale sued SAP for illegal downloading of its software for resale to Oracle customers, by TommorowNow, a company SAP acquired in 2005.

Oracle filed suit against SAP the Spring of 2007, after the company discovered TomorrowNow was accessing Oracle databases with former customer passwords and downloading proprietary information. TomorrowNow used the downloads to sell products to Oracle customers for half the price of what Oracle was charging.

Here’s a snippet from our coverage in July of 2007, just after TomorrowNow admitted it had downloaded the files:

SAP is defending its subsidiary by saying that TN customers authorized them to download files on their behalf, a defense Eric Goldman calls the "proxy defense" that’s doomed to fail.<

"Oracle can control the manner and means by which people access its servers," writes Goldman, "so even if it permits its customers to access the site, that permission isn’t automatically extensible to third parties acting on the customers’ behalf. Indeed, Oracle expressly precluded such behavior in some cases."

According to Bloomberg, who broke the news:

The verdict, which came after one day of deliberations, is the biggest ever for copyright infringement and the largest U.S. jury award of 2010, according to Bloomberg data. The award is about equal to SAP’s forecasted net income for the fourth quarter, excluding some costs, according to the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

SAP spokesman Bill Wohl said the German software maker will pursue all available options, including post-trial motions and will appeal if necessary. “This will unfortunately be a prolonged process and we continue to hope that the matter can be resolved appropriately without more years of litigation.”

Former SAP CEO Leo Apotheker is of course now running HP, which has created some turbulence between Oracle and HP this year.

November 24, 2010
HP Taps SAP for CEO Position

HP named Léo Apotheker, formerly CEO of SAP, as its new CEO to replace the recently ousted Mark Hurd. Apotheker will also join HP’s Board of Directors.

"Léo is a strategic thinker with a passion for technology, wide-reaching global experience and proven operational discipline – exactly what we were looking for in a CEO," said Robert Ryan, lead independent director of HP’s Board. "After more than two decades in the industry, he has a strong track record of driving technological innovation, building customer relationships and developing world-class teams."

Ryan added, "Léo has been a leader in anticipating the transformation taking place in our industry, and we believe he is uniquely positioned to help accelerate HP’s strategy. He has demonstrated success in the U.S. market and also has vast international experience – which will be a major asset as HP continues to expand globally, particularly in high-growth emerging markets. HP has the right assets and market positions, and now we have the best team to realize the company’s enormous potential."

"HP has a powerful mix of businesses, products and services, one of the most innovative cultures in the industry, and an accomplished management team who have played a critical role in its success," said Apotheker. "I am deeply honored to be joining the more than 300,000 dedicated HP employees."

"Given HP’s diversified products and services, its financial strength, and its leadership position across markets, no other company is as well positioned to drive – and profit from – the revolutionary changes under way in the marketplace," he added. "As we move forward, HP will continue to be a valued partner with our customers as well as a fierce competitor. I look forward to working with the outstanding people at HP to write the next chapter in the company’s long and proud history."

HP’s Board also elected Ray Lane, Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as a new member of the Board and designated him as non-executive Chairman.

September 30, 2010