It is only two and a half weeks since Oracle reported robust quarterly earnings – but of course, that was before the fear engendered by the financial collapse had had a chance to eat its way into the executive suites of its biggest customers. To judge from the news from SAP today, things have got a lot worse – and other tech companies will already be feeling the brunt of it as well.
This is what Henning Kagerman, CEO, had to say about the latest quarter at SAP, which ended last Tuesday:
The market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses. These concerns triggered a very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity at the end of the quarter.
On what was already an extremely ugly day on Wall Street, Oracle’s shares are now down 10 per cent. Enterprise software companies in particular book a large proportion of their sales right at the end of the quarter, so the September credit market meltdown will hurt. After proving surprisingly resilient for much of this year to the weakening US and European economies, it looks like tech is about to take a hit.
