When SAP releases its Q3 results later today, I’m expecting it to maintain its position as the world’s fastest-growing major cloud applications vendor with total cloud revenue up 25% to about $4.7 billion and Cloud ERP Suite up 33% to $4.1 billion.
Three months ago, when CEO Christian Klein was discussing SAP’s Q2 results, he said the company was very confident that it could maintain its aggressive growth rates through the end of 2027, and my conversations with customers since then reflect that perspective.
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While my projected total Q3 cloud growth is impressive — that’s 3X as high as the most-recent growth rate for Salesforce, and 2X higher than Oracle’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) growth rate — the big boost is coming from booming sales of the company’s Cloud ERP Suite. That’s a bundle whose results SAP began to break out publicly two quarters ago, and SAP said the Cloud ERP Suite’s growth rate has been 30% or higher for the past 10 quarters.
| Metrics | Q1 growth, revenue | Q2 growth, rev. | Q3 growth, rev. *Est* |
| Total Cloud | 24%, $4.3B | 25%, $4.5B | 25%, $4.7B |
| Cloud ERP Suite | 31%, $3.48B | 33%, $3.72B | 33%, $4.1B |
| Current Cld. Backlog | 27%, $15.6B | 28%, $16.1B | 29%, $16.7B |
In Q1, the Cloud ERP Suite saw revenue jump 31% to $3.48 billion, and in Q2 it was up 33% to $3.72 billion. For those same two periods, the corresponding numbers for total cloud revenue were up 24% to $4.3 billion in Q1, and up 25% to $4.5 billion for Q2.
Another key metric that’s been looking very strong for SAP is current cloud backlog, which reflects contracted business not yet recognized as revenue and is therefore a highly credible indicator of future growth prospects. In Q1, SAP’s current cloud backlog rose 27% to $15.6 billion, and in Q2 that growth rate accelerated to 28% with revenue of $16.1 billion.
If you’d like to get more perspective on SAP’s results for the first two quarters of the year and why I believe it’s powerful momentum will continue, check out my Q1 video overview here and my Q2 video interview here.
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