SAP has just posted a 146% growth in operating profit. SAP third quarter software revenue grew at its fastest rate in a decade, as its operating profit soared 146% to reach €1.76bn, compared to €716m in 2010. The company’s total revenue was €3.41bn, compared to 2010 figures of €3bn, an increase of 14%.

Software revenue grew 28% to reach €841m, compared to €656m in 2010, while support revenue climbed 13% to reach €1.757m.

The Germany-based enterprise application software company said that efficiency gains combined with operational efficiency led to the record performance.

The company said that its pipeline continues to remain very strong and companies continue to invest in IT. It said that despite the uncertainty in “macroeconomic environment”, its outlook for 2011 remains unchanged.

The anger that exploded among users when SAP announced plans to impose a single, more expensive maintenance plan for all customers seems to have subsided a little in the light of a more conciliatory approach. Apparently, SAP has a new found willingness to listen, share and work more collaboratively with customers, particularly with regard to product roadmaps and establishing a two-way conversation with end-users.

Despite this progress, however, pricing and licensing remains a source of dissatisfaction for many of SAP’s customers. Without greater clarity and transparency around pricing, SAP could also run into problems with adoption of their new off-premise on-demand hybrid solution. Many suppliers have used complex pricing mechanisms to muddy their pricing models in order to confuse users and to enable higher costs to be charged. Let’s hope SAP really is listening this time as their current and historic pricing models have been unusually convoluted.

Beware; the SAPman cometh. It appears as though SAP will be including new language into their licencing Agreements which may limit the contractual rights of its customer, potentially disallowing any future termination of maintenance and support services.  Hidden within a plethora of recent SAP announcements was the fact that SAP’s plans now include new language that suggests the only way it will contemplate any kind of maintenance and support services termination is if it applies to all its licensed software.  Clearly, SAP is responding to increased threats of competing support alternatives which allow SAP users to have some elements of their SAP portfolio supported by cheaper third parties. This “all or nothing” approach would appear tobe a straight forward attempt to eliminate a client’s ability to manage any kind of blended support solution and so reducing a client’s ability to pick and choose what is supported by SAP and what is not.