In his appearance at Barclays Capital 2011 Global Technology Conference this week, he made comments that I have not heard previously about the on-premise application and its strength in the company's home country of Germany.

"It’s the number one Business ByDesign market we have in the world. It’s the fastest growing Business ByDesign market we have in the world," McDermott said. So what does that mean? He didn't give any more detail. But the statement seems to fit with an August comment from Ron Gill, CFO of NetSuite, who said that NetSuite didn't have "as many umlauts in my pipeline as in deals they've [Business ByDesign] won," What McDermott didn't say was probably more important. He didn't say that SAP has exceeded its goal of 1,000 ByD units sold by the end of 2011, after having 650 at the end of the September. It seems likely that if the company had exceeded the goal, McDermott would have been said something. That goes with comments in the last issue in which SAP follower Dennis Howlett said the SAP goal had been endangered by the slowdown in Europe, but that it was likely SAP would hit the 1,000. But the comments did not suggest Howlett expected SAP to blow through the threshold.