SAP in the Cloud

SAP America is buying the workforce-management and performance „cloud” software developer SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion in cash. The $40-per-share price represents a 52 percent premium over SuccessFactors’ $26.25 closing price before the announcement.

JP Morgan Chase is arranging the $1.34-billion loan for the acquisition. SAP in the statement said that the deal could help the company beat its 2015 revenues target of 20 billion euros by as much as 1 billion.

Expert blogs and all comments highlight the fact that cloud business consolidation will accelerate even more after this premium deal, which gives SAP a competitive edge in this new platform against ORACLE. Oracle recently made acquisitions in the cloud business as we.

Experts and M&A professionals praise the CEO of SuccessFactors Lars Dalgaard, who was born in Denmark and speaks 8 languages.  During the dot-com bust of 2001, he founded SuccessFactors. He thought the cloud would be the next-big-thing in the enterprise, and he was certainly spot-on.  SuccessFactors now has over 3,500 customers in 168 countries and 15 million paying recurring users.  

Dalgaard after the deal is done, will lead the cloud business of SAP, and if he will bring the results, he might be a very likely candidate to head SAP as CEO in the future.

Cloud business:
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet).