SAP has reported software and related service revenues of €2.3bn in preliminary financial results for the second quarter of 2010, up 16% compared with a year ago. Software revenues alone were up 17% to €637m and total revenues were up 12% to €2.9bn. Profit after tax was up 15% to €491m.

Bill McDermott, co-chief executive of SAP, said large, mid-sized and small enterprises are continuing to invest for growth across many industries

SAP also announced that it has completed the cash tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of Sybase. Sybase will operate as a separate company under current chief executive John Chen and remain focussed on its core database and information management business, SAP said.

In its business outlook, SAP said it expects software and software-related service revenue for 2010 to increase between 9% and 11% excluding the contribution of Sybase of six to eight percentage points.

Not a bad set of results and one indication that IT spend is on the up again after many months of crushing recessionary austerity.

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.

SAP is changing because it needs to find different ways to make money. Companies like SAP and Oracle are under some pressure to generate more revenues from their customer base. They are spending more time farming their client base for new revenues than they are hunting for new clients. So if you thought you had signed a big cheque to SAP a few years ago and that would be that, then think again. You’ve probaby noticed that your SAP sales rep is calling at least once a quarter now and his support team will be mining deep into your organisation to create new opportunities if none are currently on your budget plans. And you’ll be well aware of the furore created when SAP announced it was planing to raise it’s annual software maintenance and support costs from 17% to 22%. Still, it’s no all bad news and there is some good news filtering out; SAP as long been working towards changing its software licencing pricing policy to give greater choice. While you can still choose to pay for the whole lot upfront, they can also offer phased payments and subscription licencing. Remember to ask your SAP sales rep for financing options whenever they present a proposal to you.

Enterprise software vendor SAP has postponed the introduction of a controversial, more expensive support package, named Enterprise Support, until next year. The announcement shortly follows the resignation of two user group representatives from the project evaluating whether Enterprise Support would benefit customers. SAP announced in 2008 that Enterprise Support – which costs 22% of license fees annually, up from 17% in the current standard package – would be mandatory for all customers. A backlash from users forced the company to postpone the support plan until it could prove that the more expensive plan would benefit its customers.