Datta acknowledged that the IT giant has been feeling the economic crunch as it announced 3,000 job cuts worldwide late last month. According to the official, the firm's business is evidently feeling the impact since 80% of the business has been dependent on the US and European market, while Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) and the rest of its global markets only contribute 20%.

Datta clarified, however, that "layoff" may not exactly be the correct term because he said the 3,000 job cuts from SAP's 51,530-strong workforce is small and that it may even be attributed to natural attrition since the company's average yearly attrition is 10% while 3,000 only makes up for about 6% of the company's total workforce.

"What happened is we virtually put a stop to hiring over the past four to five months," said Datta, explaining that people who intended to retire have left, along with employees that performed poorly--but they have not been replaced. Datta further explained that the primary reason why the recent job cuts became big news was because SAP has been on a "hiring spree" over the last few years that the 3,000 deduction to its global workforce may have come as a shock to some.

SAP's Southeast Asia business, meanwhile, has not yet been fully affected by the crisis, claims Datta, who believes that their business in the region,along with the Philippines, will not be hurt much by the global meltdown. "In Southeast Asia, we haven't fired people yet but we held back on hiring. I do hope things don't get worse; we're trying to do a good first quarter to avoid laying off people," he said.

SAP has a headcount of around 580 in the region, with 33 employees in the Philippines. Datta said they manage Southeast Asia "very tightly" so they do not expect to have any job cuts in the region. However, the official said some Southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore, have been feeling the crunch a bit more than the rest of the region primarily because of their global dependency.