SAP to Reach 2015 Cloud Target Without More M&A, McDermott Says

SAP AG (SAP), the largest maker of enterprise-management software, will reach its 2015 sales target for Web-based software without more acquisitions after taking over Ariba Inc. (ARBA), its co-chief executive officer said.

“We have all the assets we need to blow through 2 billion euros ($2.6 billion) by 2015,” Bill McDermott said in a phone interview today. “The way we’re growing in the cloud, hopefully we can even get it done sooner.”

SAP today completed its $4.3 billion purchase of Ariba, which provides a platform for companies to trade products online via the so-called cloud. With the closing of the deal, SAP will add Ariba’s sales of more than $500 million, growing at about 50 percent a year, and gain access to a marketplace four times the size of EBay Inc. (EBAY) in transaction value, McDermott said.

Integrating SAP’s Hana real-time technology with Ariba’s supply-chain management, searching and trading functions will be the Walldorf, Germany-based company’s priority, McDermott said, adding that the goal is to deliver the first joint product within 100 days.

SAP, which is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings on Oct. 24, had 104 million euros in cloud revenue in the six months ended June 30, 13 times the year-earlier figure.

The German company has said it plans to exceed 20 billion euros of overall revenue, up from 14.2 billion euros last year, even before the Ariba deal was announced in May. Like rivalsOracle Corp. (ORCL) and Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM), SAP is pushing Web-based software to lower entrance barriers for clients and reduce the computing capacities companies need to maintain on their own premises.

SuccessFactors Deal

SAP this year also completed the $3.4 billion takeover of SuccessFactors Inc., a maker of human-resources software. The move of SAP’s finance and customer-relationship management software to the cloud means the company doesn’t need further acquisitions to meet its sales target, McDermott said.

“Maybe they’ll really get enough acceleration of synergies to reach their cloud goal, but my expectation is they’ll add another asset of similar size,” said Josep Bori, an analyst at Exane BNP Paribas in London. SAP may pursue companies developing customer-relationship management or social-networking applications, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Cornelius Rahn in Frankfurt at crahn2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net