Enterprise software market leader SAP today said the worldwide economic crisis undermined its business in the last two weeks of September, pulling third-quarter financial results well below expectations.
Top SAP officials called the sudden slowdown in the company’s business dramatic and said SAP is responding by instituting an immediate hiring freeze.
“Nobody … could have predicted what happened in the past two weeks,” said Co-CEO Henning Kagermann on a conference call with journalists. “Many customers reacted with a suddenness that I haven’t seen in the last years.”
Kagermann’s co-CEO, Leo Apotheker, on the same call, termed the sudden drop in business “truly extraordinary.”