SAP Sales Jump After NSA Leaks

Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency may have embarrassed the Obama administration and irritated governments worldwide, but Jim Hagemann Snabe says the furor has been good for business. Snabe is co-chief executive officer of German software company SAP, the world’s biggest maker of business management software, and he says customers are focusing more on SAP’s ability to provide data security outside the U.S. Snabe spoke with Bloomberg Businessweek today after SAP announced a 5 percent increase in operating profit and reiterated its full-year forecasts, reassuring investors worried after disappointing results from rivals Oracle and IBM.

Why do you think the attention to the NSA and its surveillance programs have helped SAP?
As you can see in the quarter, our cloud biz is really exploding, with more than 160 percent growth. That is in the same quarter as all the uncertainty around cloud security came up. I think the best way to read that is when companies look for their suppliers in the cloud, they are going to well-established companies they trust, not smaller companies where they don’t know exactly where the data is. So I actually believe that this increased focus on cloud security has become a reason for SAP to win in the market, and we are seeing that in the numbers this quarter.