India and South Korea drive SAP third quarter in Asia Pacific

Off the back of its third quarter results announced earlier this week, SAP has revealed that its operations in the Asia Pacific have experienced 8 percent growth in software and software-related services.

India and South Korea were highlighted as strong growth centres in a quarter that saw non-IFRS cloud subscriptions and support revenue grow by 88 percent.

The cloud subscription growth in Asia did not match the 116 percent year on year growth reported globally by the company, however, Adaire Fox-Martin, President of SAP Asia Pacific Japan said this was due to the region reporting its previous record quarter this time last year.

"When we look at this Q3, the fact that we have a positive compare against our biggest Q3 ever, I think, continues to speak about the sustainability of the business in Asia Pacific Japan," she said.

Fox-Martin said that SAP's traditional lines of business were also growing in the region.

"Even in a world that's migrating to cloud ... our on-premise software is still growing here," she said.

The APJ president claimed that SAP is now the world's largest cloud company, citing 85 million users that interact with SAP systems, and thanks to its 2010 acquisition of Sybase, the company also manages connectivity for 99 percent of mobile devices.

"74 percent of the transactions in the world are processed on the backend by an SAP system," Fox-Martin said.

Overall, the company reported its cloud and software revenue increased 19 percent to €4.12 billion, and operating profit increased 19 percent to €1.62 billion. SAP also touted the 1,300 customers it now has for SAP HANA in the eight months since its launch.

Within Asia, SAP HANA has been picked up by Asian Paints, LaTrobe University, Deloitte, and Net One Systems.

SAP also said in its results that about 1.9 million companies are trading over $730 billion on its Ariba network, while roughly 30 million end users process travel and expenses with Concur, and 1.7 million flexible workers are managed with the Fieldglass platform.

The company predicted its 2015 cloud and software revenue will increase by between eight and 10 percent, and expects 2015 operating profit to be in the range of €5.6 billion to €5.9 billion, compared with €5.64 billion in 2014.

Updated 9:06am AEDT 26 October 2015: SAP clarified that Q3 in Asia was not its best ever, and that its positive comparison reflected its software growth. Headline has been changed to reflect this.