WITH 420 new customer wins in the second quarter ended June 30, German software major SAP's Asia-Pacific revenues grew 7 per cent to 254 million euros (S$509 million) from 238 million euros one year ago. The company added seven new customers a day in the quarter.

Globally, the enterprise software maker reported total revenues of 2.2 billion euros for the second quarter, up 9 per cent from two billion euros one year ago.

Speaking to BizIT, SAP Asia-Pacific's president and CEO, Hans-Peter Klaey, said most of the new customers in the Asia-Pacific - which, for SAP, includes Japan - come from the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) segment of the market and (this) 'shows our accelerated traction in this growth market'.

Mr Klaey said for the six months also ending on June 30, the company recorded total revenue of 511 million euros, up 12 per cent over 456 million euros recorded one year ago. He added that over the six-month period, the company has managed to acquire 800 new customers in the region.

'For the first half-year, we had stellar performances in India and Singapore, good growth in China and solid performances in our other markets in the region,' he said.

He added that SAP applications have been selected by customers across all key industry sectors, with particular growth in the retail, public sector and financial services industries.

Giving more details about the Singapore operations, Eric MacDonald, SAP South-east Asia's president, said the company has experienced 'a stellar year to date, with outstanding results across the board and in software license sales'.

Citing company policy as he declined to give growth numbers in Singapore, Mr MacDonald said the Singapore subsidiary had sustained tremendous momentum, reporting substantial year-on-year growth in all market segments of the market in the half-year.

It had 50 new customer wins in Singapore. These included deals with Standard Chartered Bank and A*Star (Agency for Science, Technology & Research). Mr MacDonald said SAP in Singapore had as many as 22 new SMEs customers, which comes to two new small enterprise customers each week for the quarter.

'The SME business for SAP in Singapore grows in importance every quarter . . . We continue to build on our relationships with our channel partners in the SME space, and this positive collaboration is reflected by the excellent results to date,' he added.

Mr MacDonald said that SAP has also grown its 'channel partner ecosystem' in Singapore in the last year, doubling the number of midmarket indirect channel partners and adding two new small enterprise channel partners compared to June 2005.

Mr Klaey pointed out that Standard Chartered Bank is partnering with SAP to develop software solutions that will further enhance its connectedness with its corporate customers.

'This is significant as Standard Chartered is SAP's first solution development partner from the financial sector. As the solutions will be developed on SAP NetWeaver's open platform, they have the potential to become the standard for the financial services industry,' he said.

Going forward, 'our indirect channel is growing in importance as we increasingly focus on the SME market and seek to increase our addressable market globally to US$70 billion and achieve our goal to have over 100,000 customers worldwide by 2010', he added. As for Asia-Pacific business growth, SAP's market share over the past three years 'has leapt from 46 per cent to more than 70 per cent solely through organic growth'.

Commented Mr Klaey: 'One of our distant competitors spent billions of dollars in acquisitions responding to our success during the same time and actually lost market share in the process.'

Overall, the company was growing faster than the market. He said: 'Research agency Gartner had recently reiterated our pole positions and commanding leads in market share over our competitors in enterprise resource planning (including human capital management), customer relationship management and supply chain management.' Mr Klaey said the company was on track for another successful year as the global second-quarter profit gained at the fastest pace in three years and the company reached its 10th consecutive quarter of global double-digit software license growth.

'What's noteworthy is that SAP Asia-Pacific's past four quarters' software revenue was more than triple our distant competitor's Asia-Pacific applications reported revenue for the whole of financial year 2006,' he said.

And SAP Asia-Pacific has also continued to invest significantly in the region. It has hired over 850 employees in the last six months. 'Today, we have more than 7,000 employees in the region,' he said.

This article first appeared in BT on July 31, 2006