SAP reported strong growth in cloud revenue in the second quarter, while its software revenue continued to fall, reflecting a shift in the market from on-premises software and services to applications delivered through the cloud on a subscription model.
The business software company’s net profit, however, dropped on account of a provision for a patent litigation.
SAP’s cloud subscriptions and support revenue was €241 million (US$329 million) in the quarter, up 52 percent from the same quarter a year earlier under IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards).
The company now expects its non-IFRS cloud subscriptions and support revenue for the full year to grow by up to 39 percent to up to €1.05 billion, up from the earlier forecasted range of €950 million to €1 billion.
SAP also saw higher adoption of its HANA platform with more than 3,600 HANA customers and over 1,200 customers for SAP Business Suite on HANA. The company did not, however, disclose its revenue from the in-memory database platform. It said in the last quarter that it had reached 3,200 HANA customers, including close to 1,000 for the business suite.
The company’s overall revenue grew by 2 percent to €4.2 billion in the quarter, while its net profit dropped year-on-year by 23 percent to €556 million, following a provision of €289 million for its patent dispute with software vendor Versata.
SAP’s software revenue in the quarter fell 2 percent to €957 million. Its support revenue was up 5 percent to €2.3 billion. (Overall software and software-related service revenue, which includes the cloud business, grew 5 percent to about €3.5 billion.
The company has not changed its forecast for 2014 at constant currencies. It warned, however, that its non-IFRS software and software-related service revenue and operating profit growth rates at actual currency could be hit if exchange rates remained at June levels for the rest of the year.
SAP saw strong revenue growth in the second quarter in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region despite the political crisis in the Ukraine, with non-IFRS software and software-related service revenue up 8 percent year-over-year at constant currencies. Non-IFRS software and software-related service revenue in the Americas region increased 6 percent year-over-year at constant currencies.