SAP sees 28% jump in quarter four cloud revenue

Revenue and Earnings

SAP, the multinational business software group, recorded a 28% revenue increase for its cloud computing operations in 2021’s fourth quarter.

Cloud revenue reached €2.6 billion (£2.17bn) in this period, the company revealed in its preliminary financial results.

SAP believes its main cloud offering, RISE with SAP, has been a large contributor to growth. Unveiled in January 2021, RISE is a subscription-based “intelligent enterprise” as a service package for...

Three ways cloud is improving customer experience

Customer Service

Cloud computing involves internet usage to offer services, tools, and applications, such as databases, networking, servers, and software.

The cloud rose to popularity in the mid-2000s and was embraced by many businesses as it diminished traditional computer-related troubles, such as the need to buy expensive hardware or software resources.

Almost two decades later, its popularity continues to see an upward trend. According to Gartner, 85% of businesses will have embraced...

ThoughtSpot passes $4bn valuation after $100m Series F funding

Man thinking

ThoughtSpot, a cloud data analytics start-up, has raised $100 million (£74m) in Series F funding to reach a new valuation of $4.2 billion (£3.1bn).

This latest valuation is more than double the company’s previous valuation of $1.95 billion (£1.45bn) two years ago after its Series E round. In the years between, ThoughtSpot underwent a major transformation into a cloud-first company which, evidently, shows to have paid off.

Last year the company launched its first...

Democratising financial projections for the age of SaaS

Stacks of money.

More than 650,000 companies in the United States use Excel to create financial projections. While Excel is surely a versatile tool, it forces manual processes onto finance departments and essentially hinders collaboration.

Companies were locked into Excel in the past because cloud-based budget management and financial reporting software were only targeted at enterprises. These days, however, advanced SaaS solutions that automate financial processes are available for companies of...

SaaS is the way – and the way is SaaS: Exploring new market moves

SaaS (software as a service) is not a new term and has shown continued adoption and growth year on year since the term first appeared fifteen years ago, with its commonality and mass adoption only growing over time. With its innate scalability and flexibility, SaaS took advantage of the new public cloud market. Today we find ourselves at a time where SaaS is taking over the cloud computing market and according to Bloomberg, public cloud platforms, business services, and applications (SaaS)...

Which ERP systems are most popular with their users in 2021?

Sage Intacct, Oracle ERP Cloud, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP are the three highest-rated ERP systems by their users. 86% of Unit4 ERP users say their CRM system is the best of all vendors in the study. The survey-wide satisfaction rating for CRM is 73%, accentuating Unit4 ERP’s leadership in this area. 85% of Ramco ERP Suite users say their ERP systems’ analytics and reporting is the best of all 22 vendors evaluated.

These and many other insights are from SoftwareReview’s...

Five leading trends of database innovation: Cloud-native, self-driving, and more

In the wake of the pandemic, one trend that emerged is the need for digitalisation, and this will continue – and even grow – in the future. And, while it’s still not clear exactly what that actual economic impact of Covid-19 will be, IDC predicts that the digital economy will accelerate to counter this. The firm predicts that over 65% of APAC GDP is expected to be digitalised between 2020 and 2023 and spending will hit US$ 1.2 trillion.

As businesses – and even economies...

Gartner sees surge in public cloud spend as CIOs shed migration inhibitions

Global end user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow to $332 billion in 2021 at a yearly growth of 23.1%, according to the latest figures from Gartner.

Software as a service (SaaS) continues to be the largest bucket, representing almost 37% of total spend in 2021. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) represents almost a quarter, with platform as a service (PaaS) at 17.9% and business process as a service (BPaaS) at 15%.

In terms of growth, desktop as a...

Boris Krumrey, UiPath: On RPA for digital transformation and the fully-automated enterprise

UiPath, a provider of robotic process automation (RPA) software, has had a stellar few years. The company has placed third in the two most recent Forbes Cloud 100 lists, ranking the most prestigious privately-held cloud computing companies. The company won't be there this year, as it looks to an IPO - but plenty of innovation remains.

Ahead of the company's participation at Digital Transformation Week from April 20-22, CloudTech spoke with Boris Krumrey, global VP of automation...

Siemens and Google Cloud come together for AI-flavoured manufacturing cloud

Updated 1600 BST: Siemens and Google Cloud are working together to deliver AI-based solutions in manufacturing - in what can be seen as another 'industry cloud' offering.

The two companies have announced an agreement where Siemens will integrate Google Cloud's machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies with its factory automation products.

The opportunity lies in connecting what Siemens calls AI 'islands' on the manufacturing floor. Manufacturers have...