SAP's new CEO, Léo Apotheker, made a startling confession at the introduction of SAP's Business Suite 7 in early February. The speed with which the global economy spiraled downward in the past six months, Apotheker contended, was due to the success of SAP's software.

"This crisis happened because we have interconnected the world," Apotheker told his audience. It was a surprising mea culpa, especially from a man who was announcing a product suite intended specifically to support that interconnected world.

This interconnectivity is hardly SAP's fault. Nor is SAP the only company, by a long shot, to have built the interconnected economy. But the notion that implementing SAP and other enterprise software systems was a major contributor to the speed with which the world's economy went south has significant ramifications for how we understand the depth of the crisis, and how quickly we can get out of it.

This relationship between the global economic crisis and enterprise software is based on the interplay between real-time processes and the psychology of fear. One benefit of building globally connected enterprises, linked in real time by enterprise software systems, is that decision making and implementation can take place at lightning speed, largely independent of the distance between the person ordering and the person fulfilling the order.

This speed of execution is one reason that enterprise efficiency has increased so dramatically in the past decade, and why enterprise software vendors are doing better than many others in the current recession. A manufacturer can instantly commit to satisfying a real-time uptick in customer demand and, just as quickly, increase an order from a supplier to meet that demand. That supplier can then signal suppliers, logistics providers, and distribution centers about the change. Enterprise software not only makes this instantly possible, but it also significantly reduces the cost of executing such rapid-fire transactions — to everyone's benefit.

And, now, to everyone's detriment. These same processes can also be reversed, equally quickly. So when panic ensues, the ability to instantly cancel or roll back orders across a global network means that a crisis that might have taken months to unfold 10 years ago can start skidding out of control in days, hours, or even minutes.

This ability to turn panic into real-time action is one of many poorly understood phenomena in our current economic situation, and it underscores the importance of the psychological elements of the crisis. In regulated markets — the stock market, for example — external regulators halt trading and impose a cooling-off period that is intended to let the panic sellers get a good night's sleep and wake up the next morning a little less scared and impulsive.

That's the downside of enterprise software and global connectivity. But with that downside comes a potential upside. The recovery, and there's little doubt one will be developing before the end of the year, will ride this same rocket ship to recovery. Once panic is replaced by confidence, and new orders start to flow, the mechanisms that brought us this rapid race to the bottom will also take us back up, equally quickly, if not more so.

At which point I expect Apotheker to take his share of the credit for helping to fuel a turnaround. Deservedly, I might add.