The SAP-owned business execution software company has plans to turn Australia into a Cloud computing hub for the Asia-Pacific region.

SAP is buying cloud-based e-commerce vendor Ariba for US$4.3 billion, the companies announced Tuesday.

SAP is buying cloud-based e-commerce vendor Ariba for US$4.3 billion, the companies announced Tuesday.

SAP announced a broad set of plans to become a player in cloud computing, spanning from a "loosely coupled suite" of business applications to data integration and PaaS (platform as a service) Tuesday during the Sapphire conference in Orlando.

If you think SAP equals ERP, Bill McDermott would like a few minutes to set you straight about the 2012 version of the software giant, which he claims is in the midst of "an intellectual renewal." McDermott has been co-CEO -- along with Jim Hagemann Snabe -- of SAP since 2010 and has helped broaden the company's strategy beyond traditional applications and analytics to the cloud, mobile, Big Data and a bet-the-business focus on real-time computing with the HANA in-memory database at the forefront.

SAP intends to become a major player in cloud-based software, and has been adopting agile software development practices as one means of reaching that goal.

SAP's SuccessFactors subsidiary is rolling out a version of its Jam social collaboration platform at no charge to all users, the company announced Wednesday.

Salesforce.com is set to unveil new products for employee performance management and rapid website development on Thursday during the Cloudforce conference in San Francisco.