Ah, the irony! SAP freezes internal IT purchases
There is a deep, rich irony to an internal SAP directive to immediately halt all new IT purchases, a directive revealed by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. SAP's co-CEOs sent out an e-mail with the following instructions:
We will review all planned investments in IT equipment, hardware, software, facilities, and company cars, as well as internal IT projects. Do not order any new equipment at this time.
CIO.com's Thomas Wailgum wonders if SAP expects its customers to do the same, even as it raises maintenance pricing and it and other vendors talk up IT as a way to innovate through a downturn. He's got a point.
Of course, SAP is simply trying to be prudent through a downturn, instituting a hiring freeze and ordering "Any non-customer-facing travel already booked should be canceled immediately, even if this incurs penalties." But its own fiscal prudence may inspire its customers to do the same, which can't be good for SAP.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
