The Financial Times reports that Oracle’s refusal to offer any concessions to European antitrust regulators may lead them to issue a formal statement of objections to the deal. A complaint could come “within days,” sources tell the FT, though they note that it’s possible that one side or the other will back down before a formal complaint is filed.

If an objection is issued, it will inevitably prolong the entire review process, something Oracle and Sun can ill afford. As Ellison himself recently noted, Sun is losing $100 million a month waiting for approval of the deal.

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Revenue fell nine percent, year over year, to $2.5 billion, missing the consensus estimate of $2.67 billion. And at 39 cents, profit per share missed analysts’ 42-cent estimate.

Worse, SAP (SAP) reduced its forecast for the year. Where the once Teutonically solid company had foreseen a drop in revenue of four to six percent, it now sees a drop of six to eight percent. Clearly, sales of the software licenses necessary for building ongoing revenue continue to deteriorate.

Add to this Apothekar’s comments about “a particularly challenging environment in Japan and emerging markets” and his claim that “businesses are still very cautious in making major investments,” and you begin to see why SAP’s shares were so brutalized in early afternoon trading.

SAP’s earnings were “a clear miss” analysts at Commerzbank said in a report issued this afternoon. “The lowered software and software-related services guidance for 2009 indicates that the deal pipeline still suffers from a lack of larger deals and that clients remain reluctant to spend on SAP applications.”

“Despite the dramatically deteriorating market conditions since September, we have achieved good results for the entire year,” the company said in a note to employees. “This has only been possible because of the remarkable efforts of all employees, and we would like to express our gratitude to all of you for this. Unlike in past years, which were characterized by double-digit growth rates, the outlook for 2009 is completely different. For this reason, we will have to intensify our cost-savings efforts by implementing additional measures. After an exhaustive and thorough evaluation of all options, we have concluded that a reduction in the number of persons employed is necessary. This is not an easy step for us to take, and we are fully conscious of the implications of this decision….We plan to reduce the number of positions globally from 51,500 to 48,500, taking full advantage of attrition as a factor to reach this goal.”

In sum, thanks for all your hard work, now go clean out your desks.

A grim decision for all involved, but a prudent one considering the company’s somber outlook for the year ahead. “We have arrived in a new world in 2009,” said SAP CEO Henning Kagermann. “The economic crisis will be here to stay for some time.”

[Image credit: Flickr/Daquella Manera]

Goldman Sachs published its “Americas: 2009 Software Outlook” report today and it’s as dismal and ugly a forecast as you’d expect, given the current economic climate.

“The worst of the IT-spending slowdown likely remains in front of us, as we start the clock on slashed 2009 budgets,” Goldman said in the report. “We forecast 0 percent revenue growth for our group, below consensus at 5 percent, and 1 percent earnings growth, below Street at 2 percent.”

Beyond that, the firm forsees an eight percent decline in developed economy tech capital investment, with the likes of Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), SAP (SAP), Symantec (SYMC), CA (CA)–the so called Big 5–treading water until the economy recovers. Said Goldman, “We expect the Big 5 software companies…to benefit from more defensive revenue streams due to critical nature of functions, ’stickier’ maintenance, stronger negotiating leverage, and a likely spending consolidation to larger vendors. Hence, we assume 0 percent growth for this group in 2009.”

Ugly. Could have been worse, though.

“Our results demonstrate that the combination of a steady base of recurring revenue and profits, investments for growth in emerging markets, a range of products and services that deliver value to clients, and a strong and flexible financial foundation, give IBM a competitive edge in good times and tough times,” CEO Sam Palmisano said in a statement. “We remain confident in our full-year outlook.”

In spite of Q3 sales that missed analysts’ estimates by about $1 billion. Anyway …

An anomalous bit of good news in an otherwise ghastly financial landscape. Seems IBM somehow managed to avoid that “sudden and unexpected drop in business activity” that slaughtered SAP earlier this week. Shares in IBM (IBM), which have dropped 21 percent in the past month alone, rose a bit on the news.

Salesforce.com will be acquired in 2007. We believe the growing importance of online delivery of software and business services will make Salesforce.com (and particularly its AppExchange hub) a very tempting target to both large players (like IBM, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft) still struggling to scale down and move online, and consumer-heavy players (like Google, Yahoo, AOL) trying to ’scale up’ to the business market as a way to further monetize their online presence.”

–IDC Predictions 2007

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff (photo, right) wasn’t kidding when he said in May of 2007, “We’re the Google of business.” The customer-relationship software pioneer this morning announced an alliance with Google (GOOG) that will see it integrating Google’s online services into the Salesforce.com (CRM) platform.

Christened Salesforce for Google Apps, the offering embeds Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Docs directly into Salesforce.com’s core sales force automation, marketing and customer-service applications.

The partnership is quite an endorsement of business-workspace applications delivered from the cloud. It’s also an aggressive move against Microsoft’s (MSFT) Dynamics Live CRM, Redmond’s customer relationship management software, which is integrated with its Office suite.

Together Google and Salesforce.com are clearly seeking to challenge Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar Office franchise. As Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, told the New York Times, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, so that makes Google my best friend.” And perhaps even a potential acquirer.

In a year during which Hyperion was bought by Oracle, and Cartesis and ALG Software acquired by Business Objects, which is itself being purchased by SAP, Cognos was the last of the independent business-intelligence software vendors and a particularly attractive acquisition target (IDC estimates the market for business intelligence is worth about $6.3 billion in worldwide software revenue).

No surprise then to hear that IBM has made a $4.9 billion bid for Ottawa-based Cognos. Big Blue will pay $58 a share in cash for the company–a 9.5% premium over its Nov. 9 closing price–which it plans to fold into its Information Management Software division.

Steve Mills, head of IBM’s software group, insists the company’s bid isn’t a knee-jerk response to the recent flurry of acquisitions in the business-intelligence space. “We never do acquisitions on defensive moves or based on what others are doing,” he said.

But it’s tough to take him at his word when the premium IBM’s paying for Cognos suggests there may have been a bit of a bidding war for the company. “Cognos was the last large publicly traded BI player out there,” said Paradigm Capital analyst Gabriel Leung. “The space is growing well. It was a defensive play by IBM. They’d looked around at what Oracle and SAP were doing.”

Well, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison must be chuckling into his corn flakes this morning …

In January 2005, Oracle President Charles Phillips boasted that his company soon would be “seeing the whites of” SAP’s eyes. Well, it’s taken a bit longer than expected, but today it seems Oracle is doing just that.

Responding to a lawsuit filed by Oracle in March, SAP admitted today that employees in its TomorrowNow division inappropriately downloaded proprietary, copyrighted software products and other confidential materials from Oracle’s Web site. “Even a single inappropriate download is unacceptable from my perspective,” SAP CEO Henning Kagermann said in a statement. “We regret very much that this occurred. I want to reassure our investors, customers, partners and employees that SAP takes any departure from the high standards we set for all of our businesses very seriously, regardless of where it occurred or how confined it may be. When I learned what happened, I promptly took action to strengthen operational oversight at TomorrowNow while assuring that we maintain excellent service for TomorrowNow’s customers going forward.”

The tone of Kagermann’s comments today is a far cry from the defiant one he took during SAP’s last earnings call. “We have no intention to settle; why should we?” he said at the time. “We don’t think anything is wrong in our company. We have a long legacy at the company, with an unparalleled reputation as a trusted adviser and a trusted partner.”

Amazing how quickly a Justice Department investigation can change your perspective on an issue like this. Because today it appears that Kagermann would like nothing more than to settle this matter quickly and out of court. “I personally was surprised and disappointed that Oracle had not chosen to talk directly to me as soon as they felt something was wrong,” Kagermann said during a conference call. “We are strong competitors, but we are also parties within the industry, which has an established working practice of addressing matters of concern first between the companies rather than going directly to the court.”

Oracle said yesterday it would acquire Agile Software for about $495 million. The deal gives the software giant good exposure in the product life-cycle management business and a list of more than 10,000 customers, many of whom are clients of its Teutonic rival, SAP. Another savvy move by Oracle, whose investment strategy, though risky, is clearly paying big dividends. The question is how many acquisitions are enough?

Would Monsieur Ellison care for a wafer thin mint?