Salesforce

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.