SAP's new cloud czar to take on Salesforce, Oracle
SAP AG's purchase of Web-based software company SuccessFactors Inc could be the catalyst the old-school German technology giant needs to try to catch up to rivals in the fast-growing cloud computing market.
SAP has struggled for more than five years to create business applications that are hosted on the cloud, or Web, and the company lags behind pioneer Salesforce.com Inc and larger rival Oracle Corp in the so-called software as a service (SaaS) market, analysts say.
One of the key assets that SAP trumpets in its planned $3.4 billion purchase of SuccessFactors is the U.S. company's chief executive, Lars Dalgaard, an energetic 6'4" Dane who is one of world's top evangelists for cloud computing. Dalgaard, 44, a former pharmaceutical sales representative, founded SuccessFactors 10 years ago and built it into a leading provider of cloud-based human resources software. It went public at $10 a share four years ago, and is now worth $40 a share under the SAP deal.
