Ignoring the adr's you could substitute SAP with SSAX and change the date back 6 years or so and argue your way into owning this maturing company all the way down.
I can take this scenario and argue the exact opposite but what good would that do? It leaves you in exactly the same place you were before. That of really not knowing.
FOR SAP to keep growing, they must sell an INCREASING number of new customers at the same ASP each year.
This is true if you apply the business plan of yesterday to the future and don't adapt to new industry directions or expand business in other areas. SAP is very forward looking in this aspect.
SAP believes they can sell into the existing install base as well as add to the new customer list. At the same time dramatically increasing revenue in the area of services to push them past the y2k quiet period. In summary your linear sounding statement "must sell an INCREASING number of new customers" is far from correct.
That will be especially hard since their business was artificially stimulated by y2k remediation.
EVERYBODIES business was artificially stimulated by y2k. At any rate this is a short lived phenomena. We should also throw in the introduction of the euro currency at the start of this year as another stimula. (But this is more of a positive than a hindrance since y2k goes away and the euro wont).
AMR's market estimates are self justifying nonsense, since they are saying that all enterprise apps are "ERP." I wonder how SAP will do in the front office versus Siebel?
This will be interesting. HP is one of the main customers driving development of the SAP's functionality, and from what I understand, ecstatic about what they are now able to accomplish not only with the new engine, but also in conjunction with SAP's back office product. BTW- SAP's front office product was delayed due to last minute additional add-on requests. FWIW - I understand some very large companies are waiting in the wings for this product to be released. I suspect most are going to want to tie it to their existing back office R/3 system.
The whole concept of this gives me the chills actually. If most back office R/3 customers also want the new SAP front office engine, its going to be like repeating the sales of an R/3 system all over again to the same company. But to remain conservative, as they always have been, SAP does recognize and respect their competition and knows they have a choice of vendors who also talk to SAP's back office. I know ORCL/Siebel already do this in an attempt to head SAP off at the pass. So we will see how it all works out in the next few years. I am very bullish here.
Gee, in addition to trying to keep their existing legacy customers happy and laying off staff…,
I have never heard of any layoffs… anywhere. Companies make layoffs to bolster-up their bottom line usually when the business aspects start getting tough. And in the existence of SAP business, they have yet to hear the phrase "hard times". So anything that may have happened up until now was done for other reasons and not due to SAP NEEDING to tightening their belt. I did see the poster the other day claim Canada had some layoffs but I would look into that a little closer before insinuating it is proof of SAP's hard times. Unsinn. Quatsch.
Caveat: Yes, I am and have been short for some time.
You have taken a position and are sticking to it, and I respect that.
J
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