It’s been the week when SAP announced its quarterly (Q1) results, so let’s get straight down to the nitty gritty, the numbers and figures, the fact & fiction.

• SAP announced its Q1 2010 results (guess you saw that one coming!). Obviously there have been several views and opinions about this. JP Morgan upgraded the SAP share and was rather bullish, Informationweek is a little bit more to my liking, talking about Snabe’s  same-old, same-old SaaS “mantra” during the result call. Interestingly enough, the latter then link to Global CIO’s interview with McDermott, which hails McDermott as the one who gives SAP a new image and perspective. Germany’s Silicon.de sees troubles over low investments fade away as SAP reports double digit growth (in german) for english translation click here. Let’s round this off with 2 more distinctive insights: Helmut Guembel is cautiously hissing the recovery flag, saying it looks as if “customers are glad to get back to their old agendas”. Guembel also sets his sights and hopes towards Sapphire, where he expects a “new vision – one that is meaty”. ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett sees the growth and decline as a bit of a “mixed bag” and specifically points out the 18% decline in training revenue. Dennis is also in eager anticipation for Sapphire 2010.
• after all these figures something a little more light-hearted: CIO’s Thomas Wailgum with the “Top 10 Rejected Marketing Slogans” for Sun & Oracle.
• what a difference 11 weeks can make (can they?): Global CIO’s Bob Evans sees SAP “to have made significant progress” with its turnaround. Wow.
• Computerwoche writes “Bye Bye R/3” in its article (english version here) about the shrinking number of R/3 installation base (19%). Interestingly, Computerwoche tried to establish if these remaining, predominantly SME based installs would be interested in 3rd party maintenance once an SAP Netweaver/ERP upgrade had gone live. However, since a large number of these SMEs are lead or closely-linked to larger concerns, there will most likely be a someone else to pick up the bill.
• The next big thing in enterprise software –according to Leo Apotheker on CIO.com- is inter-company process optimization. Is it just me or do we hear more from the ex-SAP CEO now that he is with SCM Vendor GT Nexus?
• Mark Finnern talks Rugby shirts in this interview with the leader of the SAP Mentor initiative on ERPExecutive.com

and nothing from the Twitterverse this week…