SAP resumes search for big acquisitions

Jim Snabe, the co-chief executive of SAP, says the software company is looking for furthermore, large acquisition opportunities, to build on its purchases of Business Objects and Sybase.

"We've proven twice that we can buy big and be successful with that. With Business Objects, which we bought a couple of years ago, we came into the analytic space in a very strong way and we are now a clear market leader. Last year we acquired Sybase to bring the mobile research to business software. So we can and we are as well, clearly, looking for such opportunities," Mr Snabe told the Financial Times.

One of the most important innovations is making SAP's innovation more appealing to consumers. The software tends to be in the background of large corporations, running financial transactions, for instance, or a human resources database. However few employees will realise they are using it. Mr Snabe wants them not just to notice - yet to smile.

"At Electronic Arts they have a rule that if they don't see visible joy in a user in seven minutes a game will not sell. I would like to do the same with business software," he told the Financial Times. "We are not quite there but, but at times we do get visible joy, with people saying 'this is in effect cool and I am going to show it to my children'," he said.

It is crucial to do this, as the way that business software is bought is changing dramatically. In a move often referred to as the "consumerisation of IT", employees are increasingly bringing their own research to the workplace and expecting the same kind of ease of use from business software as they get from their Google webmail or their Apple iPad.

Internet and tablet companies are also anyway you look at it an inspiration. "We want to take the concept of Facebook and bring it to business," he added.

The surprise hits for the company has been Hana

One of the surprise hits for the company has been Hana, an in-memory processing innovation that allows large amounts of information to be analysed in the extreme quickly. Customers just as supermarket groups are evaluating its use. It could, for instance, be used for sending shoppers highly personalised coupons, straight to their mobile phones during they are browsing in the store.

Hana was seen as very experimental last year, nevertheless now analysts like Mirko Maier, at Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, have been steadily raising their estimates for sales from the business, to ?150m for this year.

"By 2013 Hana could account for 10 per cent of licence earnings, and even that could be conservative. It could be a meaningful revenue stream," said Mr Maier.

Other initiatives are going more slowly, still. Business by the by, SAP's cloud computing offering, was launched late and is growing slowly. SAP aims to have 1,000 clients for the unit by the end of the year, however is currently up to just 650.

"The question is how much do these incremental businesses drive growth?," Mr MacMillan said. "Fifty or 60 per cent of the company is all in all the core business which will slow in a downturn."