Business software giant SAP saw a strong financial year in 2011 with global software revenue growth at 25%, and has now set its sights on African expansion for 2012.

Franck Cohen, CEO of SAP Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), says: “It has also been the biggest year for SAP, generating €4 billion in software revenue and €14 billion overall.”

According to Cohen, EMEA represents €7 billion of the organisation`s total revenue portion. “2012 will be a promising year; however, we are cautiously optimistic. Guided by the market, we expect to grow in total revenue between 10% and 15%.”

Cohen points out that SAP is focusing on five key markets this year, namely business applications, business analytics, cloud computing, industry solutions and mobile. Mobile in particular represented €100 million in revenue for SAP last year.

SAP`s in-memory business analytics technology, called Hana, which was introduced in June last year, has been the company`s fastest growing product in its history, earning the software giant more than €120 million in six months. It uses in-memory computing combined with column stored databases, parallel processing and compression technology to rapidly analyse massive volumes of data.

However, Cohen adds that SAP will be taking an incremental approach in rolling out Hana. “Clearly, we don`t expect Hana to change the entire database environments overnight; it will be an incremental approach, and we expect to see it becoming part of critical systems in coming years.”

Pfungwa Serima, MD of SAP Africa, says the organisation is making significant investments in African expansion. “We are seeing a huge amount of opportunities in Africa and we need to move with this speed because business is looking for solutions today, not tomorrow, and we need to show that we are ready and serious about this continent.”

According to Serima, SAP has 70% market share in business software in the African region. He says SAP will be driving a renewed focus in promoting business solutions for small companies in SA, particularly BusinessOne for small enterprises.

Serima points out that the biggest challenge impacting Africa is a lack of IT competence, corruption and skills development, and emphasises the importance of educating businesses. “We`ve been putting in a big drive to bring skills into the continent. There`s a lot of education and investment that`s needed to make sure business can maintain and implement the technology we sell.”

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