SAP CEO Shuffle Shows Strength of Oracle (SAP, ORCL)

Things just still are not going well at SAP AG (NYSE: SAP).  Its CEO Leo Apotheker has stepped down as the company reached an agreement with him not to renew his contract.  The problem is that this departure was only after about 7 months, and it comes at a time when most technology giants are talking up a return of enterprise spending.  As a result of today’s management action, the company is going back to a co-CEO structure.

The co-CEO replacements are executives of the company.  Bill McDermott has headed up the field organization and Jim Hagemann Snabe has been the head of product development.  Vishal Sikka, the company’s chief technology officer, has been named to the SAP executive board.

Some consider SAP’s recent results an improvement, but many consider the company still troubled.  The biggest issue is that the company has had a hard time transitioning into smaller sales to more organizations as its sales tend to be much larger sales and in longer sales cycles.  Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) has claimed to take more and more market share each quarter.  It may be round-about to call SAP’s woes a win for Oracle above and beyond what we have already seen, but this does not exactly lend much credence to a notion that SAP is mounting a solid defense against Oracle.

JON C. OGG