SAP appears in bullish mood following its latest quarterly financial results, as revenue and profits both climbed and the company claimed "strong momentum" in its mobility, cloud and HANA divisions.The German-based business software maker reported total revenue of € 3.35bn for the first quarter of 2012, an increase of 11% compared with €3.02bn in the corresponding quarter last year. Net income at SAP came in at €444m, up 10% from €403m a year ago. The company’s different divisions – Software, Support and Software and software-related service revenue – saw solid revenue growth while the remaining division, Cloud subscriptions and support, grew a massive 625%. Frank Cohn, SAP’s EMEA president, told CBR the vast majority of that growth came from the SuccessFactors acquisition, although organic growth still registered in the "double digits."The cloud division is still only providing a tiny fraction of SAP’s overall revenue however. The huge increase in growth took it from €4m this quarter last year to €29m this. Cohn said the company was still pleased with the results and expects to see continued growth over the next few quarters.Cohn again defended SAP’s approach to cloud computing and said that the firm had made changes recently to better compete with rivals such as Oracle, which has been on what it calls an "aggressive" cloud push recently."We now have Lars Dalgaard [former SuccessFactors CEO] in overall charge of our cloud division so it is in good hands going forward. He is in control of every aspect of our cloud portfolio and has an excellent track record there."Another technology that SAP is pushing hard is its HANA in-memory analytics platform. The company registered what Cohn called "modest" revenue during the quarter of €28m and is aiming for yearly revenue of €320m.SAP had previously told CBR that it does not publically release pricing information for HANA so it is difficult to determine whether those figures are impressive or not. However Cohn pointed out that it is now generally available for customers using its Business Warehouse platform so adoption over the following quarters should increase.As for performance in Europe, Cohn said the company is hoping for "robust" growth, despite the perilous economic situation. SAP is seeing "signals of issues in terms of IT spending in both public and private organisations in the south of Europe, such as Italy, Greece and Spain, where the economic situation has been at its worst."Performance in northern Europe remained good, he added, and the emerging markets of east Europe and Africa are expected to drive growth over the rest of the financial year.
