SAP CEO: We are not arrogant, we are the market leader

"SAP CEO Henning Kagermann's Sapphire keynote (see ZDNet coverage of the event) didn't reveal any surprises. SAP is riding high after a good quarter and feeling confident in its ability to deliver on its ambitious strategy to establish enterprise SOA across its product line and enter the on demand application with a new business suite aimed at the lower mid-market.Kagermann dismissed competitors with a wave of the hand."We are not arrogant, we are the market leader. We cannot learn from the competition, but we watch them. If you look at who is running the backbone of largest companies, it is us, so we are learning from customers. They give us best the possible knowledge of what is going on in the market," Kagermann said during an interview I attended with a group of fellow bloggers.“We believe we are in the lead,” he continued. “It’s not so much about how many clients we can take over from the competition. Enterprise software is pretty sticky. We have a clear indication of where we are heading.” Most SAP customers exist in heterogeneous environments, and have multiple, overlapping enterprise software providers. “Our first objective is to convince customers that SAP is the strategic vendor of choice,” he said. Without mentioning Oracle by name, he said, “SAP co-innovates the future while our competition consolidates the past.”“We know there are companies out there innovating faster than us. It’s OK with me. Over time we will enter these spaces, articularly with A1S we will have an entire on demand suite.” He noted that 65 percent of SAP's revenue ($12.8 billion US in 2006) comes from small- and medium-

sized businesses, what SAP calls SME (E for Enterprise)......"

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