Europe's largest business software provider, SAP, has reported a rise in earnings for the fourth quarter of last year. The results suggested the company was making progress in pushing its cloud-based services.Walldorf-based business software provider SAP said Tuesday its bottom-line profit for the tree months ending December 31 was 1.51 billion euros ($1.62 billion), marking an 18-percent jump from the same period a year earlier. The German company logged total revenues of 6.72 billion euros for the final quarter of last year, up 6 percent year on year. The firm raised its revenue and operating profit guidance for 2017. The Dax-listed company said it expected this year's revenues to come in at between 23.2 and 23.6 billion euros, while operating profit would be in a range of 6.8 billion to 7.0 billion euros. Growing workforce SAP has for years been focusing on expanding its cloud-based services segment, strengthening its portfolio through a number of strategic takeovers. The cloud business enabling customers to "rent" software and applications online instead of buying licenses has been growing steadily. SAP expects the segment to create more revenue as of 2018 than the turnover from selling software licenses. The rapid rise of SAP's cloud-based services has gone hand in hand with an increase in the company's overall workforce. Toward the end of last year, SAP had 84,200 employees globally, that's 7,000 more than in December 2015. hg/jd (dpa, SAP)
