By Nicholas Greene
Cloud continued to drive SAP’s growth in 2014, with its latest financial results showing the company’s non-IFRS cloud subscriptions and support revenue increased 45{db8ca4bbfe57dc8f9b6df9233a3a6c04f4968125edf9bb330d4f787c3a87cd09} over the year to €1.10 billion (US$1.27 billion), including a whopping 72{db8ca4bbfe57dc8f9b6df9233a3a6c04f4968125edf9bb330d4f787c3a87cd09} gain in the fourth quarter.
SAP’s non-IFRS calculated cloud billings increased 115{db8ca4bbfe57dc8f9b6df9233a3a6c04f4968125edf9bb330d4f787c3a87cd09} in the fourth quarter.
Overall, SAP’s total revenue rose 7{db8ca4bbfe57dc8f9b6df9233a3a6c04f4968125edf9bb330d4f787c3a87cd09} quarter on quarter in 2014 to €5.4 billion. Total revenue for 2014 was up year on year to €17.6 billion.
SAP CFO Luka Mucic (pictured) said that growth in software and software-related service revenue was achieve in line with the company’s full-year outlook range of 6-8 per cent despite less upfront and significantly more ratable new business.
“Operating profit also increased year over year even as we stepped up investments in the cloud in response to higher than expected demand for our new cloud offerings. With the powerful shift to the cloud and our growing support revenues, we are building a larger, more predictable business over the long term,” Mucic said.
On the results, SAP CEO Bill McDermott said SAP is now the fastest-growing enterprise cloud business at scale with the most users in the world.
“With the widespread adoption of the SAP HANA platform, 2015 is all about accelerating the introduction of next generations applications on HANA and scaling the world’s largest Business Network. The roadmap for our customers and ever expanding ecosystem to Run Simple couldn’t be more clear.”
