SAP drives continued cloud momentum with Q4

HPE delivers recordsetting results for Q1

HPE has revealed its highest first-quarter performance since 2016 with revenues of $7.8bn up 12 percent, 18 percent for adjusted currency.

The earnings were boosted by record performances from Intelligent Edge and High Performance Computing and AI, which both reached $1.1bn in revenues in Q1, rising 25 and 34 percent respectively yearon-year. Compute revenue also increased 14 percent YoY bringing in $3.5bn for the quarter.

Additionally, the HPE GreenLake hybrid cloud platform powered a 26 percent rise in annual recurring revenue for the firm, exceeding $1bn for the first time.

The HPE board of directors declared a regular cash dividend of $0.12 per share on the company’s common stock, payable on April 14, 2023, to stockholders of record as of the close of business on March 17, 2023.

to €12.5bn.

2022 saw S/4HANA cloud revenue up 91 percent to €2bn, with backlog rising 84 percent to over €3.1bn.

Q4 S/4HANA cloud revenue further consistently accelerated, up to 101 percent.

At year end, current total cloud backlog exceeded €12bn for the year, up 27 percent. The figure is stated to be €62m lower due to SAP’s decision to wind down its business operations in Russia and Belarus.

IFRS cloud gross profit grew 38 percent for the year, while non-IFRS cloud gross profit rose 37 percent.

Elsewhere, software licenses revenue fell 37 percent to €2bn for 2022.

two percent to €8bn for the year, despite a fourth quarter lift.

For 2022, IFRS earnings per share (EPS) decreased 56 percent to €1.96 and non-IFRS EPS decreased 39 percent to €4.08. The decline is said to reflect a contribution to financial income by Sapphire Ventures that, mainly due to market conditions, was significantly lower this year.

SAP’s 2023 outlook anticipates ac celerating top line and double-digit non-IFRS operating profit growth, with targeted restructuring reflecting a focus on strategic growth areas and accelerated cloud transformation.

Q2 fiscal 2023 revenue is estimated between $7.1bn –$7.5bn, raising the fiscal 2023 revenue growth predictions to 5-7 percent adjusted for currency.

PwC and SAP strategy supports ESG enterprise targets

PwC and SAP have joined forces in a coinnovation strategy to help enterprises make sustainability an integral part of standard business operations.

This strategy builds upon the existing alliance between SAP and PwC and creates co-innovated solutions to enable businesses to apply ESG metrics through their operations.

Helping operationalize sustainability, the new strategy will support the incorporation of ESG measures directly into business functions, such as trading, capitalization and tax.

The enterprise tools being leveraged for these solutions include: PwC’s ESG and accounting expertize,

SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises, SAP Sustainability Control Tower and the SAP Product Footprint Management. All of these will assist in enhancing carbon measuring, reporting and steering, supply chain decarbonization, climate risk and competitive analysis, third-party risk management and compliance.

Bob Moritz, global chairman at PwC, said: “ESG has become a business imperative and is central to PwC’s global strategy, The New Equation, which aims to help clients build trust with their stakeholders and deliver sustained outcomes. New ESG reporting and disclosure requirements are being established, and greater transparency is criti-

cal to building trust.”

Christian Klein, CEO and member of the executive board at SAP SE, said: “The key to every organization’s ability to reach their sustainability goals and drive positive change is transparency. Our collaboration will combine the deep industry expertize and customer insights of PwC with our leading sustainability technology portfolio. The resulting ESG transparency will help companies reinvent their business models and deliver the sustainable outcomes the world urgently needs.”

SALESFORCE PUSHES PROFITS IN STRONG SHARE-BOOSTING Q4

Salesforce has announced compelling results for its fourth quarter and full fiscal year ending January 31, causing shares to leap up 16 percent.

The company reported total fourth quarter revenue at $8.38bn, an increase of 14 percent year-on-year. Additionally, FY23 revenue was reported at $31.4bn, up 18 percent YoY.

Salesforce’s fourth quarter GAAP operating margin was 4.3 percent, non-GAAP reported at 29.2 percent. Its fiscal 2023 GAAP operating margin was 3.3 percent with non-GAAP being 22.5 percent.

The company returned a total of $2.3bn in fourth quarter and $4bn in FY23 to shareholders in the form of share repurchases, with news its Share Repurchase Program has increased to $20bn.

Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce, said: “Now we immediately put into place an accelerated transformation plan; restructuring the company. Our profitability is up, and we are not done. We’re reigniting our performance culture and doubling down on our accountable management of our sales organization.”

Kroger groceries well-stocked with Google Cloud and Deloitte

Google Cloud and Deloitte have entered into a strategic collaboration with Kroger to help the grocery chain use cloud technologies to increase productivity across its nearly 2,800 stores nationwide.

Kroger has previously deployed a variety of Google Cloud analytics, AI and ML tools under an application framework codeveloped by Deloitte and Kroger.

The grocery giant worked with Google Cloud and Deloitte to create two purposebuilt applications to enhance productivity and boost customer experience. The first is a new task management application, and the second is Kroger’s new store management application, empowering store leaders to be less dependent on paper tools. The app provides employees with a standardized audit checklist to ensure a high-quality shopping experience for customers.

These new applications leverage Google Cloud technologies used by Deloitte to build a modern, eventdriven architecture for the retailer. Technologies utilized include AI and ML, Spanner and Dataflow for enhanced workflows and task optimization.

Accenture investment in Forma Vision beams new life into the Metaverse

Accenture has made a strategic investment in Forma Vision, a provider of live-streamed, volumetric video technology enabling 3D holographic images to be beamed into the metaverse from any location.

Through the Accenture Ventures investment, enterprises of any size will be able to use Forma Vision’s low-cost, live-streaming volumetric video technology to teleport people, places and things into their metaverse experience. Accenture and others have already conducted executive town halls, training and small meetings using Forma Vision.

Snowflake to acquire SnowConvert to storm legacy migrations

Snowflake has signed an agreement to acquire SnowConvert, the premier suite of tools for efficiently migrating databases to the Data Cloud, from Mobilize.Net

The SnowConvert toolkit has been a preferred solution for migrating customer workloads to Snowflake, using automation technologies that reduce the need for manual coding and help ensure migration projects are successful.

SnowConvert’s ability to convert workloads written in Scala and Python will make it easy to transfer that code to Snowflake’s Snowpark developer environment.

Microsoft Q2 earnings scrape by expectations

Microsoft has beaten earnings per share expectations with $2.30, adjusted to $2.32 non-GAAP for the period ending December 31, 2022.

However, revenue, despite a two percent increase from the same period last year, was reported at $52.7bn, missing the expected $52.9bn forecast and representing the smallest quarterly increase in more than six years.

Operating income was $20.4m GAAP and net income $16.4m, falling by eight and 12 percent respectively.

Cloud drove profits for the firm this quarter, as intelligent cloud revenue grew 18 percent, to $21.5bn against an expected $21.4bn. Server products and cloud services revenue increased 20 percent with Microsoft Azure reported as the key growth driver, showing revenue gains of 31 percent.

Productivity and business processes revenue was reported at $17bn against an expected $16.8bn, with seven percent growth. LinkedIn revenues grew by ten percent, and Dynamics products and cloud services revenues additionally rose by 13 percent.