SAP 20-F documents a company milestone: more customers than employees

The 2007 SAP (SAP) 20-F was posted up on the SEC website April 3 and is full of all the great statistical and IR-spin nuggets an analyst loves. And SAP never fails to deliver.

My nominee for SAP highlight of the year in 2008 is as follows. Sometime in 2007, for the first time this decade at least, and I suspect in SAP company history, SAP ended the year with more customers than employees. The document says:

"As of December 31, 2007, we had 46,100 customers in over 120 countries and employ more than 43,800 individuals..."

At the end of 2006, SAP had 38,000 customers and over 40,000 employees. Hopefully the milestone is a sign that the small/medium enterprise (SME) strategy is beginning to kick in. But with headcount up 12% in 2007, there's a way to go before they really have the SME religion.

For perspective, I point out that back in 2005, with "only" 32,000 customers, SAP crossed the 100,000 installation mark. I don't see a comparable statistic in the document this year but presumably that number is north of 120,000 these days. The customer count includes ERP, NetWeaver and Business ByDesign users and I am assuming it doesn't double count. I'll dig deeper in an upcoming IT Investment Research report.

SAP has a goal of of hitting the 100,000 customer mark sometime in (presumably late) 2010. Do they have one of those big plywood thermometers set up on the side lawn in Walldorf so that you can see it from the Autobahn?

-- Dennis Byron