UPDATED 08:00 EDT / SEPTEMBER 19 2014

SAP suddenly becomes a ‘cloud giant’ with $8bn Concur acquisition

Cloud GiantEnterprise software giant SAP SE has just grown new legs following the acquisition of enterprise travel and business expense management software maker Concur Technologies in a massive $8.3 billion deal.

The Germany-based firm announced it’ll pay $129 a share to buy out Concur, which is a 20 percent premium on the Seattle firm’s listed stock price. The deal is expected to close by the end of this year or early 2015, at which time SAP plans to integrate Concur’s offerings with its own.

Because the two companies have little overlap, the deal will see SAP gain a fistfull of new clients. Concur claims to have more than 20,000 customers, in addition to some 25 million users. It’s profitable too, raking in $546 million revenues in its last financial year.

“The combination of Concur and SAP will bring together the leading cloud-based Travel and Expense platform with the market-leading enterprise application software company, and we expect this union to drive significant value for our customers,” Concur CEO and Chairman Steve Singh wrote in a blog post revealing the news.

For SAP, this move is all about cloud consolidation. Once the deal is done, SAP will have over 50 million users in the cloud, which it claims is more than any other enterprise firm. As far as revenues go, SAP will become the second-biggest cloud company in the world.

It’s a timely acquisition because SAP’s cloud performance has been less than admirable of late. Cloud growth has been disappointing, to put it nicely, and its recent cloudy acquisitions (such as SuccessFactors) have failed to turn things around. SAP has also been embarrased by the merry-go-round of key cloud executives coming and going – most recently the firm dumped cloud boss Shawn Price just four months after he replaced Robert Calderoni, who quit the post in January.

Certainly, neither analysts nor customers have much reason to be confident about SAP’s plans for the cloud. Nevertheless, the cloud clearly presents a huge opportunity for SAP, just so long as it can stop tripping over it’s own feet. As to whether or not Concur’s acquisition will help to steady the ship, only time will tell.

photo credit: scndmg via photopin cc

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