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SAP has passed a milestone in its $3.4bn acquisition of SaaS HR application provider SuccessFactors (see here) with the completion of the $40 per share tender offer. It now has c96% in the bag. SAP had to extend the offer period three times while waiting for approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US. That regulatory hurdle appears to be behind it now so the deal should complete before too long. After that SuccessFactors’ CEO Lars Dalgaard will be in charge of SAP’s cloud business. The remit is simple but hard – sort out SAP’s flailing cloud strategy. That’s a big important task because without a credible cloud business SAP’s future will be in jeopardy. Lets hope Dalgaard gets the leeway he needs on strategy, pricing and consolidation of overlapping products.
The broader picture is that HR has overtaken CRM to become the new lead SaaS application and there are four big names up against each other SAP/SuccessFactors and Oracle/Taleo, and SaaS-only providers Salesforce.com and Workday. Like CRM, HR attracts large numbers of users so the fight for users and market share will be fierce.
