SAP Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) yesterday reported its second consecutive quarter of above 30% growth in software sales, posting a 35% jump in Q2 following a 31% increase in Q1. Overall revenue increased 20% during the period to €513 million ($731 million).
The company's president for the region Steve Watts said the second quarter performance, a record for the firm, was driven by rapid growth in its in-memory, on-demand and mobility solutions as well as steady double-digit growth in ERP and CRM software. India and China contributed strongly with more than 40% growth.
The fastest growing segment is analytics. Watts said since the release of its high-performance in-memory offering three months ago, 30 customers have purchased the HANA solution, and the company has a global sales pipeline of more than €450 million.
Turning to the over-hyped topic of the cloud, he expects software as a service to account for 15% of total software sales in five years, with the mature markets like Japan being key drivers of growth in the beginning.
He said the company's single biggest concern internally was how to scale the business to keep up with the surge in demand. Watts noted SAP has hired 450 to 500 people in the first half of the year. "In China we're currently looking to hire 100 people. We are in a constant state of recruitment," Watt said.
Globally SAP's Q2 numbers matched its APJ performance, with 20% overall revenue growth (at constant currencies) and a 35% increase in software sales.
While the company doesn't release regional figures on profitability, SAP reaffirmed its expectations of a non-IFRS operating profit for 2011 in the range of €4.45 billion to €4.65 billion ($6.34 billion-$6.62 billion).