SAP fluffs up cloud biz with $3.4bn acquisition

SAP is shoring up cloud computing capabilities with the acquisition of SuccessFactors, a human resources software firm, for $3.4bn cash.

The SAP Business ByDesign portfolio

SuccessFactors is to be integrated into the SAP Business ByDesign portfolio and will help SAP better compete with arch-enemy Oracle in the race to the cloud.

Lars Dalgaard, Founder and CEO of SuccessFactors will lead the cloud business of SAP just in case to his responsibility as CEO of SuccessFactors. In October 2011, Oracle announced the $1.5bn acquisition of RightNow Technologies, a cloud provider of tech support and salesforce automation tools.

SAP is paying a hefty premium for SuccessFactors - some 52 per cent above the closing price on Friday, December 2 and some 10 times earnings. Nevertheless it is has been slow to get its own software fully cloud-enabled and there is SuccessFactors is undeniably a substantial cloud business.

The servers

This paper looks at cloud architecture in which the servers and networks in the data center can rapidly respond to changing demands.

Soution brief paper on how ASCI uses 10 GbE grid computing and hi-definition media streaming to support a countrywide computing access network.