With this acquisition, the biggest in SAP's history, the company will see its number of cloud users increase to 50 million. SAP Chief Executive Bill McDermott said that it was, "The largest acquisition in the history of the cloud industry." While Concur chief executive and chairman Steve Singh commented, The combination of Concur and SAP will bring together the leading cloud-based Travel and Expense platform with the market-leading Enterprise Application Software company, and we expect this union to drive significant value for our customers.
The analyst community also chimed in with its views on the acquisition. Ted Schadler, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research commented, The end game for SAP, as shown by its acquisition of Successfactorsand now Concur, is to assemble a big portfolio of horizontal cloud business services useful to many customers. Others raised some eyebrows at the overall cost of the deal. Berenberg analyst Daud Khan added, While this particular acquisition was a surprise, the idea of major [mergers & acquisitions] in the cloud was something we have argued for some time, as the medium-term targets made little sense without it. While Bernstein analysts wrote, "It seems expensive. But we believe that Concur is the leader in its market and the potential synergies will be a valuable addition.
The Concur acquisition is further indication of SAPs cloud aspirations, so no doubt we will hear more at this years User Conference - make sure you have registered for a place!
