SAP Asia Pacific-Japan posts 23% software revenue growth

MANILA, Philippines - Leading business software provider SAP said its Asia Pacific-Japan group continued to outperform the business software market across the region in 2008, driven partly by the successful Philippine operations which managed to secure new and additional licenses inspite of the current business and economic environment.

On a full-year basis, SAP Asia Pacific-Japan remains SAP AG’s fastest growing region with a 23-percent software revenue growth to 594 million euro. Software and software-related services grew 24 percent for the year to 1.192 billion euro. All revenue figures in this release are expressed in non-GAAP constant currency terms and all growth is measured against the previous comparable period.   

While SAP APJ experienced difficult market conditions in the fourth quarter, growing software and software-related services at five percent, total revenue for the full year grew 20 percent to 1.532 billion euro.

“I am extremely proud of the way our team in SAP Philippines handled market conditions during the last quarter of 2008,” according to Patara Yongvanich, SAP Philippines and Thailand managing director. “In spite of the circumstances, we secured a number of very large strategic deals across the country, running contrary to the trend we are seeing for the industry as a whole,” he added.

In 2008, SAP Philippines secured new and additional licenses from San Miguel Corp., Ramcar, 2Go and Lufthansa Teknik among others, proving that a sound business case and the capacity to quantify and deliver business value continue to be of interest to SAP customers across the country.

The company also closed several small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customer wins including BioLink Pharmaceuticals, Columbia Digital Sales Company, Crocs, Julie’s Bakeshop, Manila Ocean Park, Marca Piña, Mariwasa Siam, MCX Motors, Metro Oil, North Star Travel, PNOC, RBX Rice in a Box, Skyway and Valerie Motors.

Yongvanic said the current economic and business environment is challenging for everyone – not just for SAP, but also for their customers. “Yet new opportunities continue to emerge as our customers look to SAP for solutions which provide better business insight, more efficiency and greater agility, to help them through these difficult times,” he said.