SAP has announced that it will not renew the contract of its CEO Leo Apotheker. He will resign his post, and Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe will be appointed as co-CEOs in Apotheker’s place. McDermott is the head of field orgamization, and Snabe is head of product development.

Chief Technology Officer, Vishal Sikka has been promoted to the executive board. “The new setup of the SAP Executive Board will allow SAP to better align product innovation with customer needs. The new leadership team will continue to drive forward SAP’s strategy and focus on profitable growth, and will deliver its innovations in 2010 to expand SAP’s leadership of the business software market,” said Hasso Plattner, co founder of SAP and Chairman of the SAP supervisory board.

R Wang has said in a blog post that both Snabe and McDermott have experience in SAP in the sales and product departments. He says that the appointment of Sikka might be a boon, and it could results in more unified roadmaps, and prioritization of R&D. He says that the present team has the task of bringing out innovation in engineering and product.