SAP SE today announced plans to sell its Digital Interconnect business, which provides communications software for enterprises, to Sinch AB in a deal worth 225 million euros or about $250 million.

Rumors that SAP was looking to offload the business first surfaced last month. The enterprise software giant acquired Digital Interconnect in 2010 through its $5.8 billion purchase of analytics provider Sybase.

The buyer, Sinch, is a publicly traded Swedish firm that sells cloud communications services used by enterprises to interact with their customers. The deal is Sinch’s second nine-figure acquisition in as many months. In March, the company inked a $119 million deal to acquire Brazilian business messaging startup Wavy AB.

Digital Interconnect provides application programming interfaces that enterprises can build into their applications to send out SMS messages and emails. The group’s other major target market is the telecommunications sector, where it offers software tools that help carriers with tasks such as delivering data roaming plans. Digital Interconnect also has a mix of other communications-related products in its portfolio, including the SAP Contact Center platform for managing customer service teams.

SAP claims that the business processes more than a billion messages daily for about 1,500 enterprise customers. Last month, Bloomberg reported that Digital Interconnect generates up to $50 million in annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization on revenue of about $250 million.

For SAP, offloading Digital Interconnect will help free up resources at a time when it’s seeking to refocus on driving organic growth across its bigger product lines. Sinch, in turn, is gaining a broad portfolio of software products that will complement its communications business. The Swedish company sells application programming interfaces that companies use to send customers messages via SMS, email, voice, WhatsApp and a variety of other channels. 

“Looking at Sinch’s innovation and investment strategy in the area of cloud communication platforms, we welcome them as the new owner of SAP Digital Interconnect,” SAP board member and product engineering head Thomas Saueressig said in a statement today.

The surging demand for business communications tools could lead to more acquisitions in this segment. Sinch’s purchase of Digital Connection comes a few weeks after Verizon Communications Inc. entered a $400 million deal to buy Blue Jeans Network Inc., a provider of videoconferencing and webcasting services for businesses. 

Photo: SAP